Mass Effect: All in the Details
by DigitalHelix
Summary: A "Director's Cut" of the ME epic (technologically coherent world, character development and back story, interpersonal dialogue, and aliens that are actually alien.) Slowly veering off to an AU, starting with a medevac for Jenkins; will begin to seriously diverge near the end of ME2, but will still have over 90% of the story from the game.
1. Chapter 1: Inbound

A/N - Hello! And Welcome!

What made Mass Effect so enjoyable (IMO) was the character development, and my biggest gripe, even with ME2, was that it was a quarter of the story I thought it could/should have been. This whole exercise actually started as a series of extended conversations with Liara, and then a reimaging of the Dantius Towers Incident, the Ilos Landing, the Battle of the Shroud, some of what happened between ME1 and ME2, and so on. There's lots already written, but I'm releasing and rewriting it chronologically so it flows better...and because I don't know how long it will ultimately be. At the time of initial release (i.e., when I first started publishing chapters here,) I already have over 150,000 words invested.

As far as possible, I will stay with canon, even using bits of the comics and tie-in stories acknowledged or owned by BiowarEA.

(Soapbox: Yes, it was a flaming _Hindenburg_ of an ending. Don't even get me started. I've pushed nine Shepards from ME1 to ME3 and only played past Cronos station once. Blecch. But give 'em some slack. They're trying to _sell a product, _not make us happy with the story. I assume they decided to kill off Our Hero because they can't actually tell what the world would be like after such a thing took place _and_ make us care about it. Who would there be to fight with that would be as daunting as the reapers?  
1) It's HARD to think credibly about the future. Consider some examples of people trying to imagine what the world will be like even thirty years from now. Remember Back to the Future? The world of 1985 may have been bizarre to someone from 1955, but 2015 would be nearly incomprehensible.  
2) Imagine trying to write a good story about the world of 2015 to someone living in 1955, and it becomes easier to see how different we become over time. And we're changing faster. But that change can be alienating to those who grew up in "another world"...they have little understanding and no investment in such a story. How could they?)

This story is also laced with acronyms and terminology that may be unfamiliar; turning a game into a world is complex, and involves some explaining and occasional rewriting. Sometimes a word, phrase, or acronym will be explained in context, but there's a glossary at the end of each chapter with the terms that appear in it (even if they've been used before,) because putting the unpacked term in the middle of the story not only messed with dialogue continuity, but story flow.

In terms of content rating, the bulk of the storytelling here is only meant to be a fun and harmless expansion of the ME world. Most language is only as bad as Star Wars ever got, though I'll try to be aware when it's not and change each chapter's rating accordingly. (True to form, Zaeed and Jack will be curling the wallpaper.) Realize we're dealing with soldiers here; anyone who's spent time in the military will appreciate that only Radio professionals are more casually profane. However, firefights are detailed and graphic...but this is Mass Effect, so it never gets that bad.

Also, love scenes are explicit, but I hope not overtly gratuitous. (I distinguish "love scenes" from "sex scenes.") And there aren't just three. Ultimately, this is about functional relationships; people who _genuinely care_ about each other...as friends, fellow soldiers, coworkers, and yes, lovers. As a complete story, however, this would be rated MA. In fact, as a movie, it would probably be rated NC-17.

This chapter is rated T for language; it all takes place aboard the _Normandy_ before the landing on Eden Prime.

***** Inbound *****

A countdown appeared on Shepard's Augmented Reality Overlay (ARO):

**3 … 2 … 1 …**

The blackness ended almost immediately, though the first impression was of being inside an alligator's mouth as it opened. There was also a very mechanical _kachlink-hissss_.

Memories rushed back into his awareness: The week of finalizing the new ship in drydock, a mission of which only the Captain had all the details, a crew of people the Captain had known over his career.

"Almost seems like a reunion show…but_ I'm_ not the Guest of Honor," Kaidan had chuckled during a bull session.

The Sleep Pod continued to tilt up, slowly putting pressure on the soles of his feet. He reached down to his hip pockets and checked for the QuickVert helmet and gloves. Years serving on starships had made it a habit; you never, _ever_ want to be without the ability to get into a pressurized biosuit.

His ARO winked a message from his Event Scheduler:

**Arm and equip for Combat Airdrop:  
****Eden Prime  
****60 minutes**

The first and last lines were expected, the second was new information. He stepped out of the tilted sleep pod, tapping a large holographic key to which his ARO had added, **Reset for next user**. The pod replied with an electronic chirp, and hummed back into place.

_Some expensive tech here for some pretty trivial details_, he thought. Still aware he was on the clock, he turned and walked aft down the short hall, which opened into the Main Mess.

Two people were sitting at one of the tables, talking and eating. Standing to his right as he stepped down from the sleep pods was a youngish, dark-haired man who was very focused on the small workbench with some technical-looking equipment.

"Kaidan…?"

At the sound of his name, the man looked up. "Hey, Commander." He tilted his head. "Are you okay? You look a little…wobbly."

Shepard tried to act nonchalant, realized it would be a mistake; Kaidan was highly aware of how people were feeling. "I…feel like I slept upside-down and backwards."

Alenko glanced toward the Mess. "Ouch. You want something to eat?"

Shepard paused thoughtfully. "You know…I've noticed that _eating _seems to be a solution you resort to a lot."

Kaidan shrugged as the door to the Captain's cabin hissed open. "Hey, it's my super-power."

"_Eating_ doesn't count as a super-power," Shepard deadpanned.

The Captain rounded the corner, stepping into the conversation. "It does for him," Captain Anderson glanced meaningfully toward the biotic. "Have you seen this guy pound it down?"

Kaidan grinned, but did not look up from his bench. "Don't knock it 'til you try it."

Anderson stepped up behind Alenko and looked over his shoulder. "How you doing, Leftenant? Ready for the drop?"

"I'm DIYing an upgrade from a type IV to a type V, and while the ship's recompiling my amp software, I've added some new tweaks. It should give me better duration with the same energy draw."

Anderson nodded approvingly, "That's my boy, working until the last possible second. I've always admired that." He looked at the men in turn. "I'm sorry I haven't been able to tell you more about the mission, but I think you're going to like it. You'll look back on it years from now and remember it proudly."

"An hour out, and you still can't tell us anything yet?" Shepard shook his head. "I just woke up with my VI telling me that we're landing on Eden Prime. Why the big secret?"

"It's…like Christmas," Anderson half-smiled. "Don't worry. It's good." He looked across the room at Shepard's locker, and seemed briefly to be somewhere else. His smile faded, and he turned away, batting Shepard playfully across the shoulder with a fist, "Especially for you." He continued aft to the elevator, disappeared around the corner.

They watched him go. "I wonder what _that_ was about," Kaidan puzzled. "He seemed kind of melancholy." He shrugged and touched a finger to the bridge of his nose, gesturing for his ARO to switch back to its AFM view. The orange-yellow holographic display appeared, obscuring his eyes.

"We'll know in an hour." Shepard leaned over Kaidan's techbench, watching him work on the exposed innards of the omnitool. "How close are you to finished?"

"I'm Ready-15 right now. But integration between tech and biotics can be very user-specific, so I'm using some of the ship's DCE to normalize it." He tapped his head with a free hand without looking up. "_Normandy_ sure has a lot of computing power. It's nice."

Shepard nodded approvingly. "Sure is. Well, if I can help, let me know."

"Thanks…this one's all me. There's still a significant installed L2 user base, and we swap new ideas when we get them." Alenko nodded his head at the flextronic device, "I'll let the new hardware mod air-cure while I have the time." He was silent for a moment, then added, "And I was thinking about what to eat before we land."

Shepard shook his head as he stepped over to his locker, carefully kicked the release near the floor. The locker sprang open. "You ever consider riching your mix?" He touched a control on the QuickVert fatigues and started pulling the pieces off, hanging them on the hooks inside the locker. "If you add some protein or glucose, you wouldn't have to eat as often."

Kaidan shrugged but kept working. "I would if I ever stopped enjoying recreational eating. Though I do carry a handful of boosters in the field."

"All right, as soon as I'm geared up, I'm going to make sure…um…_Jenkins_ is on the ball. Know where he is?"

"Not at the moment." Kaidan shook his head. "That kid…I swear he is so new, he leaves a trail of stryopeaunts."

"I keep thinking we'll find out why the Captain asked for him." Shepard had struggled into the undersuit layer, and was attaching the powered armor sections to his arms and legs in turn. He stopped suddenly and snapped his fingers. He pointed at Kaidan, "Eden Prime. _Jenkins is from Eden Prime_."

Kaidan looked up in realization, the ARO fading to transparency as he did. "How about that?" He nodded thoughtfully.

"And why we only have a drop squad of three. We must be meeting someone who knows the actual mission. Unless it's that turian." Fitting pieces of the armor on his legs, Shepard considered their turian visitor.

"He's a Council Spectre, isn't he?"

"That's what I heard. Kind of keeps to himself, though…" Holding the torso and abdomen assembly in place with both hands, Shepard kicked the locker trigger again. The door closed, holding the SmartPak and weapons; Shepard gripped his own torso plate and backed up to the locker. With a satisfying series of distinctive clicks and servo whines, the SmartPak clamped itself onto the rest of the armor. Shepard bent over, flexed his arms, and twisted his torso, coaxing the armor to snug itself into place with the range of motion he expected to use.

"It's kind of unusual for a turian. Normally, they're very team-oriented…well, sort of. It's all about the Honor of the Platoon, or the Division." Status lights appeared on Shepard's ARO, naming subsystems as they powered on and confirmed operational status. An array of green indicators filled the bottom of his visual field, and faded away.

Shepard continued, "But Nihlus hasn't said three words to me." He shrugged dramatically, "Me, the XO. Unless he's just a passenger…I feel like he's hiding something deliberately."

Kaidan tried to emulate Shepard's delivery, "'We'll know in an hour.'"

Shepard smiled with resignation. "That we will," he said, "But I'd rather be as ready as—"

"Lieutenant Alenko to the bridge," announced the Boatswain VI, "Lieutenant Alenko to the bridge, please."

"Break a leg," Shepard waved a thumb forward.

Rising from his workbench, Kaidan shook his head. "Still not funny." He turned and jogged aft, disappeared up the stairs.

Shepard walked over to the workbench and leaned over Alenko's omnitool, which was connected to a power supply and a service VI. The display over the GPC indicated that it was about 90% of the way through a test. Touching his left thumb to his left index finger illuminated his own omnitool gauntlet; he flipped through groups of tiles and selected one, pinched it, and touched the workbench.

**Test in Progress: Power Consumption versus Duration with and without upgrade**, read the display.

He spun the control past more options and function groups, displayed the interaction between biotic amp control and tech functionality.

Apparently the systems had some overlap, but not enough for operation of one to reduce the power of the other.

The voice of the Flight Officer sounded over the PA system, breaking Shepard from his reverie, "The Arcturus prime relay in range, initiating transmission sequence."

Another voice replied, "We are connected."

"Calculating transit mass and destination," said a third.

A text message appeared on Shepard's ARO: **Capt. Anderson: Can you be on the bridge for this jump? Nihlus is up there.**

_Gotta make us look like pros to the turian_, Shepard thought. He touched his left thumb to his middle finger tip, gesturing for a text message, "Captain: _Aye Aye, sir._" He turned and ran up the port stairs, taking them two at a time.

"Relay is hot, acquiring approach vector." Joker's voice continued over the shipwide, "All stations secure for transit."

The door scanned Shepard and let him on the CIC.

"Board is green." said the engineer's voice.

Joker's voice again: "Approach run has begun…we are in the pipe." Shepard jogged forward, exchanging glances with Pressley and dodging a rating, slowed to a walk as he reached the top of the steps. As he approached the cockpit, noting the window covers were closed, he stopped, unconsciously squinting in preparation for the jump. "Hitting the relay in three…two…one…"

There was a flash of black.

Joker's postjump announcement was an anchor to reality. "Thrusters…check. Navigation…check. Internal emissions sink…engaged. All systems online. Drift…just under 1500K."

The turian nodded once. "1500 is good. Your captain will be pleased." He turned and strode purposefully away.

When the alien was out of earshot, Joker muttered, "I hate that guy."

Kaidan looked quizzically at the pilot from the weapons station. "Nihlus gave you a compliment…so…you hate him."

"You remember to zip up your jumpsuit on your way out of the bathroom, that's 'good.' I just jumped us halfway across the galaxy and hit a target the size of _that guy's brain_." He raised his finger and thumb toward Kaidan, held only a millimeter apart. "That's not 'good,' that's _frickincredible_." He put his hand back on the armrest. "Besides, Spectres are trouble; I don't like having him aboard. Call me paranoid."

Kaidan shrugged good-naturedly, "Okay, 'You're paranoid.' The Council helped fund the construction of this ship, they've paid for the privilege of sending someone along to watch out for their investment."

"Yup. That is the _official_ story. Only an idiot believes the official story."

Shepard nodded to himself. "I think he's got you there, LT. You don't send Spectres on _shakedown flights_." He tapped Joker's headrest. "But unless they give us a reason to distrust or dislike them, you _are_ being paranoid. And unpleasant."

"What…? I didn't say any of that stuff to his face. And how about the fact that _nobody's told us anything about this mission yet_? I think that's an excellent reason not to trust 'em. We don't go anywhere unless there's a good reason, and that goes double for Spectres. So what are we doin—"

"Joker," the Captain's voice interrupted from the board, "Gimme the sitrep."

The pilot leaned forward just a bit, spoke fractionally louder, "Just cleared the mass relay, Captain. Stealth systems engaged per your order. Cruising speed for Eden Prime, I put our ETA at…thirty-one minutes to AFG. Everything looks solid."

"Good. Find a comm buoy and link us into the network. I want mission reports relayed back to Trident before we hit ground."

"Aye aye, sir." Joker touched two fingers to his left ear. "Gladdy? Get us talking to Trident. Captain wants them knowing what's happening without asking."

"Connecting to network now," answered the communications officer.

Joker nodded, glanced aft again. "Uh…better brace yourself, sir. I think Nihlus is headed your way."

The Captain sounded like he was talking through his teeth, "Not unless he's figured out how to get behind the drive core without crawling outside the ship."

"Oh...uh...then I suppose you're safe for the moment."

"In a relative sense. Did Shepard ever get there?"

Shepard leaned toward the pickup, "Right here, sir."

"Commander, after I get done here, I want you to meet me in the Comm room. I need to brief you for the mission."

"I'll be there, sir." The comm chirped as the channel closed. "The skipper sounds upset," Shepard turned to go. "I hope nothing's gone wrong."

"He always sounds like that when _I'm_ talking to him," Joker said.

Kaidan made a face as if thinking hard. "I can't imagine why."

**# # #**

Shepard headed aft. He could hear the Chief Navigator and Chief Engineer on the 'comm. "I just saw him…he marched past like he was on a mission."

"He's a _Spectre_; they're _always_ on a mission."

"And we're getting dragged right along with him."

"Relax. Charlie, you're gonna give yourself an ulcer."

Pressley shook his head, "Had it. Fixed it. Alliance paid for it."

"Heh…you, too? Aw…don't worry. Captain won't let anything bad happen."

The Navigator seemed to become aware of Shepard's presence. "I hope you're right. Nav out." He waved a finger through the holographic toggle, and turned to face Shepard. He saluted, "Congratulations, Commander. Looks like we had a smooth run. You heading down to see the Captain?"

"I am indeed." Shepard returned the salute. "It sounds like you don't trust our turian guest?"

"Sorry, Commander, just having a chat with Adams down in engineering. But you have to admit there's something odd about this mission. The whole crew feels it."

"Think HQ is holding out on us?" He shrugged, tried to act unconcerned. "We may not Need To Know. Not the way _I'd_ do it...but it's not my command. You don't have a problem with the Captain, do you?"

"Not a chance. Served with him for years. He's one of the most decorated soldiers in the ASF. I'll bet if he melted down all his medals and citations, he could build a life-sized statue of himself." Pressley squinted thoughtfully. "But you don't send a soldier like that on a _do-nothing_ mission. And he's taking this way too seriously; something big is going down."

Shepard pressed him, "Think the shakedown thing is just a cover?"

Pressley, arms folded, nodded his agreement. "Do the math. If all we're supposed to do is test out the drive and stealth systems, why send a Spectre…a _turian_ Spectre…on a human ship? These are the guys that leave _double-digit body counts_ everywhere they show up." He scowled. "I'm not a fan of being left in the dark. Especially with someone like that."

"You don't like Nihlus?"

Pressley shrugged. "I don't like turians on principle. My father fought in the First Contact War. Lost a lot of friends when the turians hit us." He waved a hand dismissively, "I know; Nihlus wasn't even born. That's why I say "on principle.'"

"Individuals are accountable for their own actions," Shepard agreed. "I know what you mean, though. Have you seen the equipment he brought?"

"No," Pressley said thoughtfully, "And neither have you…unless you've developed magical X-ray vision. Those crates are still sealed."

"Yeah," Shepard looked down at himself. "And it makes me feel like I'm underdressed." He shrugged. "If he's not gonna bust that stuff out now, when did he plan to?" He waved it off, "Captain said to prep for airdrop, Full Armor. I'm on my way to see him now."

"Maybe you'll find out what we're really doing."

"Well, just stay alert. You might find out. Or maybe I will."

Pressley looked back at the CIC console. "Well, good luck, Commander."

"Thanks." Shepard continued aft.

As he approached the Command dais, he heard Corporal Richard Jenkins, the relatively inexperienced soldier, and Doctor Karin Chakwas, the ship's Chief Flight Surgeon, talking. Richard was his usual bubbly self, "…I grew up on Eden Prime, Doc. It's just not the sort of place Spectres visit. It's a sleepy little colony world. There's nothing there but a shining example of an Alliance-backed settlement. Something here stinks."

Chakwas shook her head, squinting. "That's crazy. The Captain is in charge here. He doesn't take orders from Council Spectres."

Richard hunched his shoulders, as though hiding behind a large collar, and held up his hands as if grasping, "It could be some kind of covert operation; Captain might be under orders to deliver the turian somewhere and pick him up when he calls. Even _he_ may not know what the mission is about. And this Nihlus guy is _antimatter_. I heard he took down an entire enemy platoon all by himself!"

"Corporal, it is my professional opinion that you have watched entirely too many episodes of _Updater_."

Richard smiled as Shepard approached, "What do you think, Commander? We're not going to be stuck on Eden Prime too long, are we? I'm itching for some real action."

Chakwas folded her arms, "I sincerely hope you're kidding, Corporal. Your 'real action' usually ends with me patching up crew members in the infirmary."

"And me having to write letters home to _new widows and grieving families_," Shepard said grimly. "You need to calm down, Corporal. _Expert_ stays calm, even under fire. And we are not under fire."

"Sorry, sir. But the waiting is killing me. I've never been on a mission with a _Spectre_ on board. Heck, hardly anyone has!"

Shepard settled back on his heels a bit, and breathed. "Just treat this with the professionalism and decorum that you want to have on your record, and you'll do fine."

"Easy for you to say. You're the hero of the Blitz. Everyone knows what _you_ can do. This is my big chance. I need to show the brass what _I_ can do!"

Shepard locked eyes with the Corporal. "You think that was my first mission? This isn't about scoring points in a game, Corporal. You're about to put your life on the line because you believe there's a worthwhile reason to do so. But you are putting the lives of everyone in the squad in _danger_ if you think this is about being a hero."

"Don't worry, sir. I'm not going to screw this up!" He glanced at Chakwas, and saluted Shepard, looking as focused and serious as he could.

Shepard tried to put it in perspective. "We have a job to do. Don't think of it as _not doing your worst_…think of how you _can do your best_." He returned Jenkin's salute with a reassuring smile, "You're young. You have your whole life ahead of you."

"And what a way to start it," Jenkins grinned at Chakwas again, "A mission with a _Spectre_. What an adventure!"

Shepard's smile fell; he took a breath, held it for a moment. He muttered, "So many painful lessons to learn…"

Suddenly, he looked down at Jenkins' collar and squinted as if he saw something on it.

Jenkins looked down at his tunic as Shepard reached out his left finger and thumb as if to pick some stray bit of debris off the younger man's clothes, and then very carefully – almost surgically – gathered most of Jenkins' shirt in a fist, gently pressed him against the nearest bulkhead, full eye contact.

In the two or three seconds it had taken to do this, he mustered every memory of those he's lost, and the pain – never gone, just ignored – of their deaths. _Laura, Rex, Kirk, Kathy, Harriet, Roland, Phoebe, Dean, Ray, Artie, Hal, Bill, Ruth_…tears welled in his eyes, reddening them…_Ernie, Robert, Steve, Dorothy, Chere, Fitz, Esther, Dan…_

Jenkins' eyes grew large as he found himself with no escape. But his expression changed subtly as he made eye contact: _Shepard was in pain._

Shepard spoke, his voice a raspy whisper, "Rich, listen really closely, because I'm only gonna say this about a billion times." He struggled to keep his voice from cracking, paused for effect. "The team. Always. Comes. First. No One…gets left behind. If aborting a mission will _save your life_, I'll do it. Every. Damn. Time." He brought his right hand up, index finger extended and knifelike. "And so will _you_. Any questions?"

Jenkins' mouth opened, but no words came out.

Out of the corner of his eye, Shepard could see Chakwas looking like she was not believing what she was seeing. The XO was right on the edge of assaulting a fellow soldier.

He continued, enunciating each word carefully, "The loss of a life is something that _cannot be undone_. We do so as a _last resort_. If someone dies, we have _failed_. Maybe it _was_ provoked. Maybe _they_ even started it. But the reason my squad always includes a medic is because killing is not what we are there to do. We save_ everyone_. Even the bad guys, if we can. Don't shoot to _kill_…if you injure an enemy, you take _him_ out of the fight, plus the guy who has to pull him to safety and treat his injury." As he spoke, he had slowly pushed himself away from Jenkins and now had him at arm's length. "Any questions?"

"S…sir?"

"Corporal, do you have any questions about this SOP _that I expect you to follow_ while you're posted to the _Normandy_?"

"Sir, No, sir!"

"Outstanding, Corporal." Shepard released Jenkins, straightening out the younger man's uniform, took a breath, let it out. "However, I realize that you might not think of everything at this particular moment, so _if you think of a question later_, or if you'd like to _talk through a scenario_, please message me."

He took a step back. "It's important that you know not just _what_ we're doing, but _why_ we're doing it. Then you're better equipped to function on your own, even if I'm not available to tell you what happens next. It also builds trust, and that's something we cannot succeed without." Shepard snapped a salute, which Jenkins answered instantly. "Carry on."

As Shepard stalked around the corner, he bared his teeth at his own behavior. _Unprofessional_, he thought. _But new guys always think it won't happen to them,_ he argued with himself. _There is nothing glorious in death._

As he stepped over to the Comm Room, he heard Chakwas say, "I hope you didn't join the Alliance so you could kill bug-eyed monsters, Corporal…"

**# # #**

The door hissed open, and Shepard saw only the Spectre. Armored in black and red, and studying the holographic display at the back of the room, Nihlus glanced back and said, "Commander Shepard. I was hoping you'd get here first. It will give us a chance to talk."

Shepard eased into the room as the door closed behind him. "Sure…about what?"

The turian seemed taller than when they'd met on the bridge. "I'm interested in this world we're going to…Eden Prime. I've heard it's quite beautiful."

"Never seen it myself. But Jenkins was born there." He waved a thumb over his shoulder, "Want me to call him in? He could probably bore you to tears about it."

"That's not necessary; I'm more interested to hear what _you_ know about it." The turian turned back to the data scrolling past on the main display.

Shepard thought back to meals with Jenkins when he got to hear about such things. When he put a hand to his chin in thought – which signaled his VI – it responded by running up a quick list of his discussion topics with Jenkins and superimposed it into his visual field. "The system had been located about a hundred years ago by space telescopes, so there was a lot known about it before the Alliance even existed. The star is about half the age of Sol, and the planet with our colony is what they call a "princess" planet...it's not only in the 'goldilocks zone,' it's got more oxygen, richer soil, and a population just under four million."

"Right now, it's just a Level Two colony, largely funded by Colonial Admin, but self-sufficient since 2178. I understand the native microflora and fauna were similar enough to Earth's that they have brought in lots of plants and animals from home. So far, almost all of them have integrated into the local ecology successfully. They're using locally-designed fcRNA to mod the rest.

"They actually _grow_ a lot of their food instead of mining and printing it. Not just plants, but animals. Bison, mammoth, palorchies. I understand somebody's experimenting with dinosaurs, too…Earth's paleo-mega-fauna. All of which makes for an unusually self-sufficient colony. Jenkins seems to think that eating 'real steak' is enough of a luxury they'll be able to build an economy around it in the coming years. I'm not a huge fan of the stuff, myself…so I don't know. But it _is_ an easy stop when bouncing through the relays if it turns out he's right, and I _would _actually try a 'Brontoburger' if I had the chance.

"Every colonist family has a 1200 millimeter extrusion fabber and H-K omnitools even though they're not first-on-the-grounders. I'm a heavy user of omnitech, and I think that's a publicity stunt…Hahne-Kedar doesn't _make_ omnitools. I think they're just rebranding last year's entry-level Aldrin, but it seems to be going over well with the colonists. They have realtime PVR, local and interstellar exabit.

"Of course, they've probably got some culturespin that's unique, but for the purposes of this operation – what I know of it – I don't think that's anything to worry about." Shepard took another step toward the display. "Were you listening for something in particular? My info on it is skewed because of my source." He smiled, but was careful not to show teeth.

Nihlus didn't look away from the holograph. "I was considering the larger picture. It's become something of a symbol for your people. Proof that humanity can not only _establish_ colonies across the galaxy, but also _protect_ them. But how safe is it really?"

_Is this guy actually trying to provoke me?_ Shepard wondered. He paused to consider his answer; how to remind this Council agent that the Alliance would not be bullied or intimidated. "As safe as _Elysium_," he folded his arms across his chest. If this turian Spectre knew anything about Elysium, he would surely know that Shepard was largely responsible for it still being there. "Do you know something I don't?"

"Your people are newcomers to the galactic stage, Shepard. It can be very dangerous out here. Are your people really ready for this?"

"For what…to leave our planetary cradle? We already have. But we're not going to be ready if you're deliberately keeping us in the dark." Shepard paused, took a breath. "Sorry, it's been a few months since I was part of a turian operation. You're probably painting the grimmest picture and expecting we'll just stoically 'die for duty.'" He shook his head, "Humans aren't like that, and they don't like being _treated_ like that."

The door hissed open again. Neither of them took his eyes off the other to see who it was.

**# # #**

Anderson saw his XO's body language, and decided to stop the discussion before it actually got unpleasant. "Sorry I'm late," Anderson was shaking his head, "Galley's having power supply problems, and the engineers would rather play with their new engines."

"Captain," Shepard turned and smiled faintly.

Anderson sighed. "I think it's time we told the Commander what's really going on."

"This is far more than a simple shakedown run," Nihlus sounded almost conspiratorial, "We're making a covert pickup on Eden Prime. That's why we needed the stealth systems."

Anderson added, "It's a fairly lightweight way to check them out under actual operating conditions. The Alliance can review the municipal system records after we leave and see if we actually left any kind of signature."

Shepard nodded. "Hm. Safer than testing in combat, in case something fails, not as insulting to the Alliance if the operators don't detect us." He turned and studied the alien. "But why are _you_ here?"

Anderson answered, "A geological survey team found something when they were mapping strata. Something technological. They were discreet enough to contact the Alliance first, instead of Colonial Admin, and we sent another team to recover it. It's the biggest piece of intact Prothean technology since the find on Mars in '48."

Shepard paused to think about the implications. "Protheans? That's incredible. I remember when the Mars finds started to become public. Among other things, it jumped our technology forward…" he shook his head, "Two hundred years. Is this bigger or smaller? And why does it need to be a secret?"

Anderson was suddenly intense, "Must be smaller, or they wouldn't have sent the _Normandy_. As for why it's a secret…well…Nihlus, would you care to elaborate? I must confess I'm also curious. And we're close enough to Eden Prime that – as Captain of this boat – I think I'm about done _not knowing_."

The turian nodded. "I can't tell you everything…there isn't time, and some of it is classified for other reasons. But I can tell you that I personally have intel about at least one other organization that wants this artifact _very much_. Worse, I have reason to believe that even the Spectres may have been compromised…to the extent that the existence of this artifact is now known to this other organization. Thus it is important that we be both quiet and quick."

Shepard exchanged a glance with Anderson. "Can you tell us who? Or what sort of interaction we should expect?"

Nihlus' field of vision allowed him to read the display on the inside of his collar; it listed organizations with which these two humans were known to have any affiliation. He thought, _Your people may not even know about the Collectors yet, and you might be part of Cerberus yourself._

"If we're discreet, we won't have any," the turian said. "If they know about it, they will likely try to take it by force. That's why you are an excellent choice: If this turns into a firefight, I will be able to see your skills for myself. If it gets really bad, I will be able to back you up. Ideally, it won't come to that. But I've brought equipment that will change the game if there is a significant disparity. I won't let the mission fail."

Anderson faced the holodisplay, hands behind his back, but spoke to Shepard, "This comes right from the top. The Alliance wants this thing safe, and the Council has offered to give our scientists access to labs that can help…in exchange for any data we recover." He turned to Shepard. "But Nihlus isn't just here for the beacon. He's also here to evaluate you…as a Spectre candidate."

Shepard blinked. Then he blinked again, squinted at Anderson, and pointed at himself. "Spectre candidate? Me?"

Anderson nodded. "The Alliance has been pushing for this for a long time. Humanity wants a larger role in shaping interstellar policy. They want more pull with the Council, and the Spectres represent the Council's power and authority. If they accept a human into their ranks, it shows how far we've come."

Nihlus stepped closer, "You held off an enemy assault single-handed during the Blitz. That showed not only noteworthy courage and skill, but resourcefulness. That's why I put your name forward as a candidate for the Spectres."

_This is no time to remind people that I didn't do it alone_, Shepard thought. "_You_ did? Why would a turian want a human in the Spectres?"

"Not all turians resent humanity. Some of us see the potential of your species. We can see what you offer to the galaxy, and to the Spectres. We are an elite group. It's rare to find an individual with the skills we seek. I don't care that you're human, Shepard. I only care that you can get the job done."

"That's almost reassuring." Shepard turned back to Captain Anderson. "I assume this is good for the Alliance?"

Anderson nodded sagely. "Earth needs this. We're counting on you."

"No pressure, though," Shepard grinned slightly; Anderson looked away sheepishly. "There a reason you didn't tell me about this, sir?"

Anderson looked at him again, "Wasn't my call. I endorsed you in the selection process, but I didn't know if you got it until the Spectre Office contacted me and made arrangements to accommodate Agent Nihlus here."

Nihlus nodded, "I need to see your skills for myself, Commander. Eden Prime will be the first of several missions together."

Anderson pointed to the holographic map. "You'll be in charge of the ground team. Secure the Beacon and get it onto the ship quickly and quietly. Nihlus will accompany you and observe the mission from a remote location."

Shepard turned to Nihlus, "Are you expecting trouble?"

"I always expect trouble," the turian answered.

Shepard scowled. "That's no answer. Do you have relevant intel on this situation or location that you think will be important to mission success?"

Nihlus tipped its head forward slightly, curled one claw into a fist. Shepard recalled – and the ARO indicated – that this was a turian gesture of approval and encouragement. "Good. You won't be bullied into a blunder." The turian clasped its claws behind its waist. "In fact, no. I don't have any more directly-related info. But this is the sort of mission a Spectre would be involved with, so it's a good opportunity for me to see how you work. Will you have underlings, or are you going to do this solo?"

Shepard paused. "I don't run a mission alone if I think I can do it better or safer as _part of a team_. There's even a human proverb to that effect. 'Two can prevail against one...'"

"…and a three-fold cord is not easily broken," the turian finished, "Very good." He turned to the Captain. "I think he'll do."

Anderson turned. "You ready to go, Commander?"

Shepard nodded confidently at his skipper. "I'll make it happen, Cap'n."

Gladstone's voice interrupted over the PA, "Captain, we've got a problem."

"What's wrong?"

"Transmission from Eden Prime, sir. You need to see this."

"Pipe it down here, Gladdy."

The holographic display lit, the image hissing and crackling, tilting wildly as the camera did. A soldier in white armor was firing at something offscreen left. Whoever it was ran toward the camera and shouted, "Get down!" and shoved the camera as if it were paparazzi. The sound of nearby gunfire was continuous.

The video stuttered and jumped; another soldier in camo greens was trying to get a signal out. His hand was to his ear as he said, "We are under attack, taking heavy casualties, I repeat, heavy casualt—"

The signal switched to another source, and then back.

"We can't…" —static— "We need evac!" More gunfire and chaos, the image filled with noise.

Another voice, off-camera, "They came outta nowhere, we—" There was a brief burst of noise, almost a musical note, modulating and flanging as the image thrashed wildly—

_black_

"That's it, the signal just cut out," the Comms Officer reported, "It's not being jammed, it's just _gone_."

Anderson stepped up to the console in front of the display, "Did you record it?"

Gladstone's voice answered, "Yes, sir. Linking to the CommCon now."

Anderson worked the controls, scrubbing the image back and forth until he found what he wanted: A black shape, looking disturbingly like a hand, surrounded by smoke and lightning. The image offered no sense of scale or distance.

He stepped back and studied it. "Now what the hell's that?"

Nihlus said nothing; both mandibles twitched once.

_What does_ that _mean?_ Shepard wondered. His ARO offered no info.

Anderson was not pleased. "Outstanding," he glared at Nihlus. "Joker. How long until we hit the Drop Zone?"

"Nineteen minutes, present speed, sir."

"Make flank speed; get us there as fast as you safely can."

"Flank speed, aye, sir!" All three felt the compensators bend the shipboard gravity as Joker accelerated.

Anderson turned to Shepard. "Commander, this mission just got a lot hotter. It may now be the most important mission in your career. Something or someone is landing what looks like an invasion on this little garden world at exactly the time we're trying to get an important find off it…and the Spectres don't know who it is or why they're here." He glanced accusingly at the turian.

"I wish I could send you in with more. Go get Jenkins and Alenko suited up. You've got twelve minutes…maybe fifteen…to get to the hangar, ready for drop."

"Yes, sir," Shepard saluted quickly, and headed for the door while illuminating his omnitool. "Alenko, Jenkins, Code Red drop in ten minutes. LZ is hot, friendlies are under fire. This is not a drill. I repeat: Code Red Drop in—" The door hissed closed behind him.

Nihlus turned to exit as well, but was stopped when Anderson held up a hand in front of him. The turian turned only his head to look at the human curiously.

Anderson kept his eyes on his own hand, fingertips lightly pressed against the smooth turian armor. "Spectre, I don't know the full extent of your agenda here, or your relevant knowledge. But if I find you have deliberately set my crew up to fail and die by withholding relevant information…" He made eye contact, "I will not forget. And I will not be silenced."

"Captain Anderson," the Spectre purred, "If I knew anything and withheld it from my allies, I would have to be a traitor or a fool. I can assure you…I did not get to where I am…by being either."

***** Glossary *****

AFG: Atmospheric Flight Geometry

AFM: Atomic Force Microscope; a hybrid device developed in the 1980s allowing both observation and manipulation of individual atoms. VI-enhanced AFMs are frequently used in modification and repair of nanotech devices.

ARO: Augmented Reality Overlay

ASF: Alliance Special Forces

CommCon: Communications/Conference room. Also "Comm Room."

DCE: Distributed Computing Environment. VDI (Virtualized Data Infrastructure) systems evolved into entire computing environments as data storage and active memory merged with the advent of memristors, and then with an active computing storage model with "computronium."

DIY: Do It Yourself

fcRNA: fast-coding RNA (Ribonucleic Acid)

GPC: General Purpose Computer. Some computing systems are left "freestanding" from local DCE for security or financial reasons

L2: A configuration of neurotronic wiring used in human biotics. Removed from market after high numbers of users experienced deleterious side effects. Most L2 users upgraded to the L3 configuration at the time, though a replacement of such wiring is not without risks. L2 users who were not seriously affected often retained their wiring because of the higher spiking abilities of the L2. By 2183, only a few thousand examples were still installed and in use.

PVR: Polyphase Virtual Reality

Ready-15: A state of alertness; Ready-15 means you are ready to hit the dirt, guns blazing, in fifteen minutes. There are also modifications of this (e.g. "Ready-5, Ready-10, Ready-30, etc.)

Sitrep: Situation Report

SmartPak: an integrated weapons carrier worn as the back panel for compatible standard armor types. Active hardpoint controllers are linked to standard combat VIs so that a soldier has only to reach for the weapon for it to unlock and begin decompaction. Also automatically connects to weapons and allows them to finish compaction when being secured.

SOP: Standard Operating Procedure

Trident: Name of Alliance Operational Headquarters

_Updater_: An action-adventure-sexploitation show about an asari Spectre


	2. Chapter 2: Not on My Watch

A/N - This chapter is conservatively Rated M for some mature content and a firefight. Lots of technical detail about battlefield medicine in 2183.

***** Not on My Watch *****

Joker's voice echoed through the hangar, "Over Drop Point One in sixty seconds. Ready for Hangar door open." The forward end of the hangar clanked and growled as an orangeish light began to shine in.

Shepard had just finished inspecting Jenkins' and Alenko's suits when Anderson's hand was on his shoulder. "Your team is the muscle in this operation."

"That's what _I'm_ talkin' about," Jenkins agreed.

"What about survivors, Captain?"

"The Beacon is your top priority. Looking for survivors is secondary."

Shepard frowned. "Sounds like they're _dying_ down there, Captain."

Jenkins turned suddenly. "Survivors? What?"

"I know," Anderson nodded, "But that should tell you how valuable this thing is. The Colony isn't our primary mission; we don't have the manpower for it. We're just here for the beacon. I've called Trident, forwarded the transmission we picked up. But it's good that we're here before they've had a chance to take the beacon from us, too. Get the beacon safely back to the _Normandy_, and then we'll deploy SAR." Anderson folded his arms across his chest. "Since this could be a First Contact situation, the usual stuff applies, but since it looks like they've already engaged, you're authorized to use Deadly Force, your discretion."

Shepard could see Jenkins becoming agitated. He took a deep breath, exhaled, and nodded. "Dubyenski, Lowe, and Crosby are qualified CFR One and Two. I know they're off shift, but they're not Sleeping. If you can get them on the ground…"

"It'd be the right thing to do," Anderson agreed, "Though it could foul up our departure. But I'll see if they're up for it." He shrugged. "If I know Crosby, we'll have more trouble getting _him_ back aboard than you."

"Probably." Shepard grinned, "I don't know what Chakwas will do if she ever loses him." He nodded at Anderson, clacked the ammoblock into place on his rifle, and lit up the electronics. "We'll get that Beacon, sir."

"Ten seconds to drop," the Loadmaster's unamplified voice came from aft and still managed to fill the cavernous hangar. "Team One, gear up!"

Jenkins eyed the Spectre suspiciously. "Nihlus, you comin' with us?"

"I move faster on my own," the turian answered, looking up from his weapon but not making eye contact. He jogged up to the end of the loading ramp and leapt out.

"He's not part of your mission, Corporal," Anderson spoke over the wind noise, "He'll scout out ahead, and feed you status reports throughout the mission. Otherwise, I want radio silence between you and him."

Shepard nodded, "Expert, Ready and Able, sir."

Anderson nodded grimly, looking where the Spectre had just disappeared.

"Drop Two in ten seconds," called the Loadmaster, "Team Two, gear up!"

Shepard held his hand, palm up, between Alenko and Jenkins. He shouted, "Are we ready?"

Alenko got his hand in first, Jenkins put his hand on theirs. "We were _born_ ready!" They answered together. They raised their joined hands a few centimeters and then quickly dropped them as Shepard shouted, "Go, go, go!" He turned and ran to the end of the loading ramp, and leapt the 300 meters or so to the ground. The MEFGs in his dropsuit activated on the way down, slowing his descent.

Each suit's four generators used the same tiny amounts of element zero, but put a huge power draw on the suit. This kept costs down, but it meant the generators failed regularly. Any two were enough to assure a controlled landing, and one was enough to allow survivability. Each dropsuit was linked to the user's ARO so they'd know on the way down if they needed help from another diver.

Shepard saw that both Jenkins and Alenko had failed generator three. This was not uncommon for right-handed divers, because it was the most heavily encumbered, but it was annoying to have them both fail _now_. His own suit started to slow his fall, as the two other men steered over to flank him. As he watched, Alenko's suit failed generator two as well.

Jenkins' voice was in Shepard's "radio ears," "You seein' this, sir?"

"You'll be fine," he answered, "This is a real short drop, and we're almost there."

"View from up high is bad," Alenko said as he touched down. "Three firefights that I could see, and damage to two of the SRN towers."

Serbrook-Regal Nanofacture ("SRN") had designed the NewTower series of self-assembling skyscrapers that was finding a lot of success in the colony market. The _Normandy_ had dropped them so they were facing into the sun, with three of the 70-story buildings in view. Shepard's ARO informed him that this variant had internal waste processing and UPS [Uninterruptible Power Supplies], collector arrays on all the sun-facing surfaces, and it could comfortably house and support over 900 people. It also deployed using local materials, and was "self-steering" in terms of its orientation, optimizing for weather and sun patterns (which had to be entered at startup by a user or VI.)

_I hope they have automated Fire Control_, Shepard thought grimly.

Nihlus, not subject to Anderson's radio silence order, seemed to think it worthwhile to provide info to Team Two. "This place got hit hard, Commander. Hostiles are everywhere. Keep your guard up."

As Shepard pulled his rifle off his SmartPak, his ARO switched to Combat Mode. Since there were no targets present, it simply began providing range and vector data on wherever his attention focused.

Jenkins, who had hit the ground running, was standing despondently at the edge of the cliff. "Oh, god…what happened here?"

"Smells like smoke and death," Kaidan added.

Shepard tapped a key on his forearm and the helmet sealed itself into Hardsuit mode. Even though Eden Prime was a garden world, and a reportedly pleasant one at that, sealing their suits allowed them to talk to each other without being overheard acoustically. He made eye contact with his teammates and tapped his sealed helmet. It would also protect them in case the enemy was using chemical agents.

"We saw part of a transmission just as we were on final," Shepard told Jenkins as the other two men's suits reconfigured into Hardsuit mode, "I'm sorry you didn't get to see it. Looked like the local troops were taking a beating. We don't know who's responsible yet," Shepard compared the ARO with the rifle's local display. "Alright, light 'em up. Stay frosty. Don't die." He turned and started away from the distant buildings and was followed, first by Alenko, and then more reluctantly by Jenkins.

They were partway across the swamp when the suit showed motion at 25 meters. Shepard, on point, motioned for a stop. The ARO showed the target's relative location; it wasn't moving fast, and it wasn't heading for them. Shepard checked his suit's status. "Hey, remember to go to active camo." He switched his own on, and the suit VI painted camouflage on their suits as Shepard pointed left and right to cover. The two other men moved silently to the places he'd indicated.

From his location, Shepard saw it first, Kaidan saw it next. Even as alien as it looked, the slow-moving organic balloon creature simply wasn't threatening; it was almost comical. It was hard to tell if the Lieutenant was stunned, or just exasperated. "What the hell's that?"

"Gasbags," Jenkins said, suddenly feeling like the know-it-all. "Me and my sister used to hunt them. Called them 'Politicians!' Mom though it was funny, but dad made us stop."

"Are they toxic? Or dangerous?"

"No, but they're really chewy, and there's not much edible tissue. They're filled with hydrogen…I think…so they make a nice big explosion if you set fire to…"

"Alright, quiet," Shepard interrupted. "You guys haven't seen what we're up against, but I have. This is serious, and I need you to stay focused."

"Sorry, sir."

A glint of metal caught the attention of the suit camera, and Shepard's ARO called it out. "Hold. Something to the south." Bringing the weapon to his shoulder changed his ARO view to what the rifle scope saw. "Looks like…it's electronic." He stepped closer, weapon still trained on the unknown device. When the suit VI identified it, it highlighted the silhouette, and tagged a label to it. The information showed up on all their AROs:

**SHIELD GENERATOR, ELKOSS COMBINE  
****RFID SN: SY12-WW18-812X-4148  
****DATE OF MANUFACTURE: CE297.02182.**

"A shield generator," Jenkins read. "And not too old. Looks like it still has power."

"Somebody must have dropped it," Alenko stood, lowering his pistol.

Shepard continued his slow approach, waiting for his modified suit VI to run a series of tests on it. If it was a disguised mine, it needed to be destroyed. If it really was a shield generator, it was a valuable find.

The VI's analysis agreed with the RFID.

Shepard aimed a few centimeters to the side of it and fired a single shot. Dust erupted into the air, and the cigar-sized generator rolled away from it. "I'm calling it safe," Shepard said. He approached, picked it up, and examined it. Rolling it between his hands, he worked the dirt off and held it up for them to see. "Who's got the lowest-powered shields? I'm at 150-980."

"120-920 for me," said Richard.

"Sounds like he gets it," said Kaidan.

Jenkins reached for the generator module, and stopped halfway. "Wait. What are you at?"

"_Lieutenant_," Alenko said with a meaningful look.

"Awww, I don't know about that. You may be a biotic, but you're just as vulnerable to hostile fire as anyone."

"We don't have _time_ for this," Shepard put a hand on Alenko's shoulder and spun him around. The generator module slipped into place on the backclip and lit briefly to indicate successful integration. "And you lost a second generator on final. I'd bet real money you had to use some biotics to slow your descent."

"Thanks, Commander." Alenko managed to sound both relieved and annoyed.

"You don't _mess_ with the Richard J.," Jenkins strutted like Inky Blinky, a popular performer with animated LED tattoos. "None of this _takin' one for Rich_ crap." As Shepard stepped between them on his way east, Jenkins tweaked the controls on his rifle, set off after Shepard.

"Guess not," Kaidan relented, and brought up the rear.

They backtracked across the swamp and up a small rise, where they found two burned bodies were prone across a rock, faintly smoking. Jenkins started to run to them, then drew up suddenly.

He gasped. "They're…dead!"

Shepard frowned. Dead they were, and beyond his immediate help. He gestured to his suit VI to stop showing sensor data on them, then pulled a handheld device off his belt and sprayed the head orifices with Nanotech Neurological Preservative (NNP.) The bodies might well be beyond healing, but the neurological structure could be protected from further deterioration. With the proper tech, the personalities could be largely reconstructed. The families would have the option. It was the last resort, but it was the best he could offer.

"What are you doing?" It was hard to tell if Richard was disturbed or just confused.

"I'm protecting their brains against further damage," Shepard explained as he replaced the NNP pack, "We have the technology to build human bodies, or at least most of them, and in case the family doesn't want to let them stay dead—"

"But they're…they're in heaven now," Richard was wide-eyed, "You can't save them!"

"Death isn't an event, it's a process…" Kaidan started to explain.

"And they're at the end of it," Richard pointed at them, "These are just…just _husks_, the people are gone!"

Shepard and Alenko exchanged a glance. Shepard rose from a crouch. "And there's nothing else we can do here."

"We can notify the next of kin," Jenkins said, pointing at the bodies, "Do they have any ID on them? RFIDs or cybernetics? Are their omnitools—"

"There's nothing else we can do here," Shepard repeated, "A proper medical team will have to handle this. _We_ are on a mission. Victor Indigo, mark the location and send a notice to the local 911 network. Sign my name." The suit VI displayed its instructions on the ARO to let him confirm them with a gesture. "Jenkins. We have to go." Shepard started north, away from the bodies.

Shepard performed a digit flick and the ARO displayed its rear view in a translucent window. Jenkins was following, but he kept glancing back at the bodies. They hadn't gone twenty meters before they found another. Shepard positioned his body to block Jenkins' view, quickly dropped to one knee, sprayed the head orifices with NNP, and issued another command to his suit VI. He wasn't quite fast enough.

"Why are you still doing that?" Richard sounded somehow angry and offended, "They're _dead_."

Standing again, Shepard turned to Jenkins. "Remember that stuff I told you about _the team always comes first_?"

From his deer-in-the-headlights expression, it was obvious he did. "Yes, sir…" He took a step back.

Shepard pointed at the fallen body, "Because we weren't here, this guy is dead. This," he held up the NNP sprayer, "is the best I can offer. So I offer it. If you don't want to do so yourself, then you may explain to their families why you did not. But I choose to help everyone I can." He turned and continued north. "Let's go."

As they walked, Shepard's suit comm clicked.

"Rich, this is Kaidan. I've switched to privacy mode for a moment. He can't hear me, but he could hear you, so just listen."

Shepard acted as if he couldn't hear this, and kept walking north.

Kaiden continued, "Our esteemed Commander Shepard is a _Technologist_. I don't just mean he knows about technology, it means he thinks that technology can save us. Not only from nature, but from each other…and maybe even death."

"Wha-?!"

"Quiet! He can still hear you," Kaiden said quickly.

"Corporal?" Shepard said without slowing his brisk pace.

"Sorry, sir…it's nothing."

Kaidan was silent as they continued north for a few seconds. "That was close. Like I said, just listen. Shepard thinks technology can save us…I've found the best thing to do is just let him spray his magic bottle on the dead ones. He's not hurting anyone, and it makes him feel better. And if you tell him I told you this, I'll put a grenade in your shorts. We can talk later if you want, but for now, just trust me and keep quiet about it."

The comm system chunked again.

"Hey, you guys getting any interference?" Shepard tapped his helmet. "I keep hearing something."

Kaidan feigned troubleshooting, "What…like static? Line noise? Echo?"

"Like someone's tapping their bone mic."

"I heard something," Richard said, "And it did sound like that."

Shepard played along, "You suppose Nihlus could be listening in?"

"Not on this channel," Kaidan said.

"You don't know that," Richard sounded like he was squinting, "I hear Spectres get access to lots of Top Secret tech."

Shepard smiled to himself, "That just means _they_ have to work the bugs out. Always more bugs in new tech than old tech, or stuff that's already been commercialized and licensed."

"Well, I haven't heard it. But I'll be listening for it now," Kaidan finished.

As they reached the top of the next hill, they could see three more of the SRN NT70s, two completed, the nearest still building itself. Smoke billowed from the two nearest.

Shepard's ARO had mapped their destination, and the next hundred meters or so were clear to a blind corner to the right. Outcroppings of rock offered ample cover.

Alenko was all business. "Two targets incoming. They're moving fast and straight; I think they're flying."

Shepard raised a fist, _Hold_. He directed them to cover on either side, waited until they were in position, and then moved forward.

"Eighty meters. Watch 'em." said Alenko.

Shepard said, "Check your targets, remember this is–"

Two matte-grey drones appeared at the far end of the next rise, raining fire as they came. Richard, well covered but closest, found himself their target. His training was to dive for new cover, but as he did, the machines tracked him precisely. Two lines of blue fire connected the drones with their prey, and Richard cried out in surprise and pain. Blood sprayed across the landscape behind him as he fell.

Shepard gestured to accelerate into full Firefight Mode. Everything around him seemed to slow down to nearly a crawl as the neurotronics sped up his synaptic rate to six times normal speed.

"Rich!" Kaidan leapt from cover, running _toward_ the drones, and then suddenly spinning a kind of pirouette; tech relays flew from either hand. In one fluid motion, he seemed to land in a crouch, throwing something at the drones as one might throw a javelin. As he did, indigo light exploded from his head and shoulders, coalescing into a projectile that accelerated away from him.

As the tech relays got within a meter of their targets, blue-white electrical arcs connected them with the relays, sending sparks flying. The burst of energy struck the electrically-joined machines and exploded.

There was nothing to do but watch the deadly dance; clearly it was one that had been performed many times before. But it did give Shepard time to start bringing up his weapon.

A third drone had joined the fray, and was bearing down on Kaidan. With his accelerated perception, Shepard could also move with increased precision; he took his right hand off the rifle, plucked a tech relay off his belt and flung it underhand toward the third drone. As it sailed across the space between them, Shepard gripped his rifle and squeezed the trigger. The drone exploded, close enough to Kaidan that he put up a hand to shield himself.

"Man down!" shouted Kaidan. He sprang across the field to where Richard had fallen.

Gesturing to slow back down to **No Acceleration**, Shepard watched the debris fall to the ground as he also bolted to Richard's side.

"Damn damn damn…took his leg off…and shrapnel in his abdomen." Kaidan wasn't looking up from his omnitool as the suit computer continued to analyze the injury. "Charged ammo, and lots of it; the stuff ripped right through his shields. Who are these guys?"

It didn't sound like the kind of question requiring an answer; Shepard dropped to his knees as the VI informed him it was switching to Sentry Mode. A radar-like overlay appeared on the right side of his visual field; no other moving objects had been detected. Shepard continued, "Jenkins' suit, active medigel deployment, code Blue."

"**_Medigel deployment at 30% efficiency_**," replied Jenkins' suit VI. It presented an icon on Shepard's ARO which, once activated, displayed an overlay of the damaged armor. Five of the twelve AbPlate modules had been shattered, medigel conduits underneath were useless. "**_Warning: Medical Emergency Proto—_**"

"Quiet, I know!" Shepard interrupted. "Release panels two, six…seven and eight. And eleven…and twelve." Atomic crosslinks between the panels retracted, the remaining pieces of the armor settled slightly, but visibly. Shepard pulled the debris away, flipping pieces aside as though digging; blood was filling the spaces between. Jenkins' suit would not be able to get the gel to where it was needed.

Shepard gestured to his suit VI, and the ARO showed what Kaidan had seen; whoever sent the drones, they were using smaller slugs at higher velocities, wrapped in shield-piercing "jackets." Though the jackets didn't make it through the shield, they allowed the payload through. The armor had taken all the damage, and even a gram of ammo accelerated to a fraction of light speed could shatter the exotic armor materials.

Shepard glanced at the tactical display; the bad guys were still headed in the same direction they had been; they still had some time. "Victor Indigo, manufacture replacements panels for Jenkins' ground armor…uh…Abdomen panels two, six, seven, eight, eleven and twelve."

The omnitool chirped as it began working; Shepard glanced toward Kaidan. "How you doin' there?"

Kaidan pointed, "I need to keep him from moving; hold him down over there. Do like this…" Kaidan brought up a knee and pressed it down on Jenkins' hip. Shepard put his right knee on Jenkins' left hip as Alenko pulled the detached leg up by the armor. "No, there!" Kaidan pointed higher up Jenkins' torso, "You don't want pressure near the abdominal wound. We might have to leave the leg, but…wait! Does his helmet have stasis installed?"

A glance revealed the double-lined and faintly-glowing green triangle. "Yes." Shepard turned his wrist so the fabber could still produce the armor replacements as he put a finger to the icon and held it there. After a pause, the helmet chirped three times, and then made a low hooting sound over their comms. Lights at the neck interface and on the front of the helmet slowly flashed blue.

"_**Emergency brain support enabled**,_" Richard's suit VI announced.

"Good," Kaidan said, pointing at Jenkins' belly, "Do you know how to tell if that's set up?"

"I have to build armor segments to get the gel applied," Shepard said as the omnitool chirped the completion of another segment, "But that'll take—"

"No, get the gel on there now!" Kaidan interrupted, "Otherwise he'll bleed to death!" He lifted the medigel pack he was holding, broke the seal and mashed it into the open wound. "The conduits are just for better control, the tech in the gel can work on its own; tape him shut!"

"I'm fabbing his armor," Shepard waved his left arm slightly, "Can you do it?"

"Trade places with me; you'll need to keep his leg together so he bleeds less." Kaidan rose to a crouch, "Do you know how to cauterize it? Chakwas can put it back on when we get back to the ship."

Shepard set the armor segment down on Jenkins' chest plate, moved to his right and took the leg at the knee and ankle. "Here?"

"Wait, stay where you are, put your…put _that_ knee _there_," Kaidan pointed at Shepard's left leg, slapped Richard's other hip, "And put a little weight on it."

Kaidan's enhanced vision showed him structures in different colors by density; he manipulated his omnitool, which extruded two small toothpick-like structures almost instantly. Fitting them on his thumb and forefinger, he picked a few pieces of shrapnel out by hand as Shepard placed two more armor segments atop Jenkins' unmoving chest. He fed them quickly back into the disassembler.

Shepard folded open his left thigh pocket, and handed Kaidan a nine centimeter square, wrapped in clear tape.

There was a faint fizzing sound in Shepard's ears as he fitted the last two pieces of armor into place. The ARO informed him that the damage underneath it was now getting medigel, that it had formed a scaffolded dermis, and was filling it quickly with blood recoded as IPS cells.

"Glad he's not awake," Shepard observed.

Kaidan didn't look away from his omnitool, "Oh yeah. 'Cos if it didn't hurt, you _know _it would itch like crazy. He wouldn't be able to keep his hands off it." He adjusted the omnitool and studied the display of how far along the reconnection process was.

With nothing to do but hold the Corporal together, Shepard noticed that Jenkins was not breathing.

And had no heartbeat.

"Still got no respiration, and no pulse," he said, "Do we need to start CPR?"

"No, you can't. Not yet. We have to get his leg and abdomen sealed. But he's in stasis, and that'll do what we need. When I tell you, you get up and trade positions with me again. I'm going to restart him as soon as I think the structures are strong enough to withstand it. What I really want you to do is hold this leg in place. Medigel should normally run for about five minutes before putting this kind of stress on it, but I don't think we can afford to wait. The leg was severed, so the armor can't go into Splint mode."

Shepard glanced at Kaidan and then at his omnitool. "There's a field repair for that. If I can fix his exoskeleton, will that do the trick?"

"Field repair? We don't have the time! We have to get him restarted, and we can't do that until he's closed up."

"Wait…if he's in stasis, can he wait for another minute?" Shepard started the build.

"One minute?" Kaidan seemed surprised and confused. "Well, yeah…but I thought it would take you longer to print out a new leg module."

Shepard explained as the omnitool printed. "His suit VI knows where the damage is; I only have to print four pieces of fifteen centimeter splint. They grip to the FlexNet and interface with any edition of PCMA newer than v12."

As the "treed" rods slid into Shepard's left hand, he snapped them apart and test-fitted them to the armor on Jenkins' lower left leg before taking them off again. "Set it to display instructions on your TransOpter instead of mine." He touched the hologauntlet with one of the splints, and began affixing them to the armor

"Insert Medi-Gel™ between severed segments," Kaidan read off his ARO, "Clear a 3cm margin…Apply antiseptic tape…Set compression to 120 and…" He shook his head, "For a reattached amputation? How long have they had this?" He pulled another pack of medigel off his belt and broke the seal as Shepard fitted the bottom two struts. Blood continued to ooze freely, even if it wasn't pulsing; there was still a huge gap between the parts of Jenkins' leg.

Shepard picked up the BioTape card Kaidan had put on Jenkin's armor, rolled out a length of it, and slid it between the struts and Jenkins' leg. "I heard about it…mm…eighteen months ago, but I have a special interest in my personal health, so I try to stay aware of such things. Also wanted to be able to help if anyone needed it."

Kaidan focused on Richard again; with the tape under the leg, the medigel would be retained while it worked. Shepard tore it off at a perforation, and patched the ends while Kaidan adjusted the settings on Jenkins' medigel controller. "That's it? Just because it might be helpful?" He touched the Start key on his omnitool. "Wait. We've got to get him restarted. You're going to want to grip the leg like I'm doing here. See how I have my hands around the injury, and how I'm keeping it up off the ground?"

"Got it. I can do that."

"But I'm going to restart his heart, and that will make him jump. That'll mean _away from you,_ and up _away from the ground_. You'll have to support the lower leg and be able to move it in that direction as needed. We can't let him break open, or he'll bleed to death."

Shepard's sentry radar pinged. "Unknown at one-fifty, northeast. Looks like two walkers. We've got three…maybe four minutes."

"Let's get him going, then. Are you ready?"

"Ready."

Kaidan seemed to hesitate. "You know I left you in the loop with the Technologist talk," he said almost guiltily.

"Of course. Sierra Hotel, Lieutenant; I appreciate it. I thought you handled it _brilliantly_." He glanced back down at the Corporal, "Now are we gonna _use technology_ to save him or what?"

"Yeah." Kaiden grinned and nodded. "Okay, let's do this."

Shepard rose, moved next to Kaidan, took Jenkins' leg – trading hands with Kaidan one at a time – and then positioning himself so he could see the injury. "Victor Indigo, Sentry to left half of ARO. Medical TransOpter on right half." The display adjusted, and Shepard was able to see the bones looked to be perfectly aligned, but still with some space between them.

"Gut injury's doing well," Alenko said. "You have an update on the inbound?"

Shepard focused on the Sentry display. "No change in speed or direction. I think we're dealing with ground mechs. But I'm not getting IFF data off 'em, so they're not municipal. Could be private, but I'm thinking they're hostiles. We have maybe a minute and a half before they'll be able to see us...assuming they haven't already picked up our infrared."

Kaidan had straddled Jenkins' chest in a crouch, but put no weight on him.

"I'm gonna restart him; are you ready?"

"Ready."

Kaidan spoke to his omnitool, "Jenkins' suit, Code Blue restart now!"

"_**Charging for restart**,_" replied the suit VI. "**_Clear of contact?_**"

Alenko hunkered down slightly, gripped Jenkins' helmet with both hands, "Clear!"

There was a muffled metallic _crunch_, and Jenkins lurched violently. Kaidan threw out an arm to keep from being smashed against the rock as Jenkins coughed, sputtered, then inhaled on his own. He convulsed, bringing his right leg up to try to push Kaidan away.

"Hold him down, hold him down!" Kaidan pressed a finger into Richard's helmet to toggle the brain support out of Recovery mode and back to its Stabilizer mode. "Richard…Richard! You're _okay_!"

"Richard, you're alright," Shepard spoke quickly, "It's Stephen and Kaidan. You took some fire, but we've got you back. We've got to move, though."

The man flailed as his eyes blinked rapidly, "Help," he said through clenched teeth, "Help!" As he seemed to focus on Kaidan, he relaxed. "Oh…Kaidan…I mean, Lieutenant. What are you doing here? What happened?"

Kaidan watched Richard's vitals on a translucent window on his ARO as he waved his omnitool over the splint. "We got ambushed. You took some fire. We fixed you up, but it was close. You need to lie still for a few minutes and let the damage repair."

"One minute…" Shepard saw the bones in Richard's leg were cooling to 35°C, but not fast enough. "Can we move him? Up to that rock, so we have some cover?"

"Carefully. Richard, we have to move you. Don't try to help. Just relax." Kaidan moved around so he could drag Richard by his shoulders; Shepard kept weight and shear forces off the still-fusing leg. Fortunately, they only had to move about a meter.

"Can I have some medigel? Do I need it?" Richard asked.

"You've got three packs working right now," Kaidan peeked over the rock toward where he knew the inbound was. "If you haven't got a PMA running, you should start one."

"Uh…sir?"

"A Pain Management App." Alenko glanced at him briefly. "Wait, don't tell me. You thought you could just tough it out?"

"It's not bad now…well, it kind of throbs…" His eyes grew suddenly larger. "Hot!"

Shepard gripped his wrists with his opposing hands, "Go like this, Jenkins, go like this!"

Both Richard's fists were clenched. "It itches like a _mother_!"

Shepard tapped one finger on Jenkins' faceplate, "Attaboy. Keep it up. Stay focused." He leaned up closer to Jenkins' face, "And if you reach for it and I will personally _knock you out_," he said, continuing to hold the leg aloft and toward Richard's torso.

"I know, but I didn't know it would _burn_!"

"Do you have ToughIt installed?" Kaidan wheeled through something on his omnitool. "Or Sleepi?"

"That stuff's for _nerds_," Richard sputtered.

"You'd better get over _that_ attitude real quick, Corporal," Kaidan continued to look at his omnitool's gauntlet display as he took remote control of the Corporal's omnitool, "These things have been developed by people like us for use in situations like this. If you don't have them, or know how to use them, people can die. Your DI should have told you as much."

Jenkins spoke through clenched teeth, "You sound just like him," he growled, "My suit's as well-programmed as everyone else's."

"It's not about letting the tech do the work for you. You have to be prepared for these things. I'm taking over your suit VI," Kaidan hunkered behind the gray outcropping, "You've got to have _something_…there." He nodded, seemed satisfied. He activated a very heavy-duty tranquilizer/analgesic. "AFE has some stuff...there you go. That should help."

Richard relaxed visibly. "Oh…" he blinked rapidly, "Oh, that's much better. Hey, I could do this all day." He took a couple of breaths. "Wait. Aren't we supposed to go get something?"

Shepard snapped, "Quiet, stop moving. Bad guys at fifty meters." He watched the blobs on his map overlay for a few seconds. "Still acting like they don't see us."

The three men looked at each other expectantly as they waited. Shepard kept watching the ARO's calculated map. Whatever the two things were, they turned and accelerated toward the humans. "I take it back," Shepard said, "You two stay down." His omnitool emitted a hockey-puck-shaped tech grenade, which Shepard passed to his right hand, then another, and another. "Must have used DMT to spot us. I'm gonna short out their weapons first. Kaidan, you be ready to head over there." He nodded to the west with his head. "If I can't stop them, I'm going to draw their fire the other way."

As the tech grenades displayed a pattern of lights indicating their readiness, Shepard gestured for 6x Acceleration, then rolled left and tossed the grenades over the outcropping. Blue bolts fired overhead, and all three winked off his display.

Firefight mode slid into place. The grenades had located the two targets and sent images from aloft; before being destroyed, they showed something clearly not colony mechs; the humanoid forms were topped with a curving arc of a head, ending in a self-lit camera. Shepard's momentary ignorance disappeared into confusion as the VI identified them: **GETH**.

"Geth!" he barked. He squeezed the sides of his rifle's scope and the ARO switched to the scope's view; he poked the weapon over the top of the outcropping. The suit had discriminated the targets and outlined them; Shepard said, "Victor Indigo Autotarget!" The words **Autotargeting ACTIVE** appeared briefly over his view of the hostiles, then faded to semi-transparency. The geth were already in cover again; Shepard fired to keep them there.

One of the geth was closing fast on Kaidan; though it moved from cover to cover, it was far less conservative than Shepard would have been were the roles reversed. He tracked it until it moved through a cluster of tall grasses; his assault rifle chattered, the geth went down.

His weapon suddenly exploded; he watched in slow motion as it was blown out of his hands, shrapnel flying to the right. Refocusing on the ARO showed he had nearly been flanked. He rolled left and drew his pistol as he dove into new cover. The geth emitted a stream of noise that sounded like static as Shepard fired two preemptive shots, and then poked his pistol out from behind the rock to find himself under fire.

He pulled back into cover, touched left thumb to forefinger. As the omnitool rendered another tech grenade, he thought, _These geth things are insanely fearless…I thought they were supposed to be AGIs, not just expendable puppets._ He leaned around the rock and rolled the grenade toward the geth. Another tech grenade popped into his hand, and he tossed it high and right, drawing attention away from the lower, slower first grenade.

The flying grenade promptly disappeared in an explosion. There was a loud burst of electrical static, and the red outline disappeared from the display.

His ARO pinged an alarm and drew a callout on the hostile. Kaidan and Richard, about six meters away, were looking in his direction, and didn't see the geth weapon as it appeared from behind another rock.

Firefight mode allowed Shepard to realize he wasn't going to be able to bring his weapon to bear on it fast enough; he started to do so anyway. "Kaidan!" he shouted.

It was painful to watch the geth weapon zeroing in on his teammates faster than he was able to bring his own weapon to bear, but he continued, even as he began searching for alternatives.

Kaidan's head turned slightly. Then his back arched as if he had been impaled.

_No! _ Shepard thought.

Kaidan's omnitool gauntlet lit up as he continued to bend and twist to his left, and Shepard watched as something extended from the omnitool like a stiletto.

As they connected, it became obvious: the Lieutenant had fabricated an electrically-charged stabbing weapon. Blue-white arcs covered the geth, and the machine seemed to fold in half.

Shepard's pistol was aiming at empty air as his time perception slowed back down. He was breathing hard and fast...as usual...and his forehead hurt…also as usual.

Richard was trying to crane his neck to see what Shepard was aiming at as Kaidan stood heavily from the smoking wreckage.

"Nice work, Lieutenant. Innovative." Shepard shook his head. "Made up for my FUBAR."

The still-smoking blade was reversing into the omnitool's disassembler; Kaidan didn't look up. "Thank _you_…I didn't see him. Jenkins, you all right?"

"Getting there, sir. Probably need a few more minutes to be back on my feet."

"You can bet on it," Kaidan held up an open hand toward the Corporal. "Lie back. Stay."

The younger man barked like a dog. Then he had second thoughts and added, "Sir."

Shepard was checking his suit sensors for signs of more hostiles. "It can't be safe here. We've taken down two parties, six guys…or robots, I mean…and I'd bet you they're as aware we're here as we are."

***** Glossary *****

AGI: Artificial General Intelligence

CFR: Civilian First Response

DI: Drill Instructor

DMT: Doppler Motion Tracking

FUBAR: Fouled Up Beyond All Recognition (worse than SNAFU)

IPS cells: Induced Pluripotent Stem cells. Stem cells derived from other local tissue.

MEFG: Mass Effect Field Generators

NNP: Nanotech Neurological Preservative. After the rise in popularity of cryogenic preservation, a short-term "last aid" solution appeared for people who die quite remote from a cryo facility to prevent damage to the brain while awaiting transport. As of 2180, NNP is effective for about five to seven months, depending on the conditions at death (hydration, temperature, type of damage if any, etc.) Normally a 2cc cell of NNP is integrated into a user's omnitool, but First Responders (SAR, CFR, and other First Aid Personnel) are nearly always equipped with NNP injectors.

PCMA: Personal Cyber Medicine Application. First-line VI-augmented personalized medicine, a default app in omnitools.

RFID ("AR-fid"): Radio Frequency ID

SAR: Search and Rescue

SmartPak: an integrated weapons carrier worn as the back panel for compatible standard armor types. Active hardpoint controllers are linked to standard combat VIs so that a soldier has only to reach for the weapon for it to unlock and begin decompaction. Also automatically connects to weapons and allows them to finish compaction when being secured.

SNAFU: Situation Normal: All Fouled Up

TransOpter: Omnitool (mostly medical) function allowing user to see hidden structure of small, close objects.


	3. Chapter 3: Guart Blind

A/N - Sorry, this is my first story, so I'm making mistakes, and going back to correct them takes a bit of time. There are terms and acronyms in here that may be unfamiliar; each chapter has a glossary at the end so you can flip down to the bottom, find out what it is, and then go back. (I tried it with the full name in parentheses, but it was too distracting to the scene and dialogue flow.)

This chapter is rated T for the postmortem butchery of geth.

***** Guart Blind *****

Kaidan put a hand over his omnitool. "Should we make a stretcher?"

"It would let us keep moving…at least until he's able to move on his own." Shepard raised his own arm. "I've got 82 available. You?"

"I've got 21."

"21?" Shepard squinted. "That blade you made was a little expensive, wasn't it?"

Kaidan shrugged. "It was the _speed_ required. A lot of waste."

"Still, you can't beat the results. Is that on MilComReq?"

"No, actually...it's...from a _hobbyist_ site. This one is my own modification of…um…a tastelessly named one. Want me to send my rewrite to you?"

Shepard nodded. "Yes, and right now." He touched his left thumb and ring finger, illuminating the gauntlet, which he extended toward the other man. Kaidan pinched an icon on his own omnitool, touched his clasped fingers to Shepard's outstretched arm and opened them. Both heard a four-note tune, indicating the file had been offered. Shepard touched the icon on his omnitool and another three-note tune played as the file was accepted. "Thanks."

"I have mine set to run if I clench my fist and twist it like this," Kaidan demonstrated with exaggerated slowness, "but your VI should pick it right up after a few uses." Shepard tapped the icon again, selected an option from the menu flyout, and made the same move. The omnitool twittered and glowed briefly green. **Gesture association enabled in Firefight mode.**

"Victor Indigo, remind me of this when I get back," Shepard said toward his forearm, "I want to drill with it." The tool squirkled in response.

"Okay, we still have to make the stretcher," Kaidan pointed to his omnitool, looked up at Shepard. "You should make the connector side."

"Yeah." Shepard spun through some menus, found a pattern, tapped it, and gripped the 3 centimeter rod loosely, allowing it to extrude though his hand.

"Can we get any omnigel from the bad guys?" Richard asked.

Shepard looked up as the fabrication continued. "Good thinking, Corporal. Don't know if I'd have thought of that until we were two klicks down the road." The omnitool buzzed quietly as it worked; the olive drab matte finish on the rod was a low enough resolution that Shepard could make out where the rotary head was glitching. A look toward Kaidan showed he was making a similar, smaller rod.

As Shepard's omnitool finished, he twisted the rod off the emitter and moved the end to where Kaidan could reach it. "Here, assemble this. I'm going to go investigate our attackers, see what I can salvage."

"Shouldn't we do that together? They might still be dangerous."

Shepard sighed heavily. "We need to keep moving," he thought aloud, "We're on the clock, and we now have hostiles to contend with." His eyes fell on their wounded cohort. "Jenkins, can you assemble this while we check the mechs…um…_geth _for salvage?" He waved toward where the geth had fallen.

"You bet, sir."

"Don't strain yourself," Kaidan said, "You're still Under Construction. Stay on your back and keep your head down; let _gravity_ hold it in your hands."

"Got it, sir."

Shepard and Kaidan handed the freshly-fabricated rods down to the prone Jenkins. Kaidan generated a barrier and gestured to the nearer of the fallen androids. Weapons out, they approached the geth slowly, and from different angles. "This thing twitches, and I'll blow it to Mars." Kaidan's barrier made it almost impossible for him to hide. As they circled it, both men worked their omnitools carefully, checking multiple sensors against what they could see.

"Looks absolutely dark," Shepard observed, "No emissions I can detect."

"Nothing here, either. Wait…this is a _geth_. I mean, it's really a geth."

"Well, our VIs think so," Shepard clarified.

"Right. You know what I mean." Kaidan moved around to the other side of the fallen android. "Does that make this a First Contact sort of event? Should we save these things for study?"

"I don't see how we can. Our objective is to secure that beacon and get it aboard _Normandy_ ASAP. Our secondary is to help the locals fight off whatever is attacking, and from what we can see here, that looks like a lot more than we can handle ourselves. Jenkins is broken, and even after we get him fixed, his armor is compromised. These things," Shepard indicated with his weapon, "are probably responsible."

He paused in thought for a moment. "Still, the intel to be collected is probably in the computing substrate. Which is…in the torso, I expect. I'd bet you we can 'gel the extremities and get both of us back to full." He holstered his pistol, pulled a 23cm combat knife off his right boot.

Kaidan looked up from his omnitool and nodded. "That's what my scanner shows. I'll log the GPS so you can and include it in your report."

Shepard nodded, still eyeing the geth. He frowned deeply. "This makes me…unhappy."

"What?" Kaidan looked up from his omnitool. "What do you mean?"

"They look enough like people…I feel like I'll be hacking arms and legs off." He shook his head. "Nope. Can't think like that. They tried to kill us, and they're probably part of the invasion. Damn, I wish we'd had more intel before landing." He knelt next to the geth and plunged the blade into its shoulder. White liquid gushed out and pooled beneath the cut; Shepard withdrew the knife quickly.

"They're almost _organic_," Kaidan sounded astonished.

"I expected muscle analogues…with this structure." Shepard waved his knife at the arm, "I didn't expect it to go so far." He steeled himself, sliced the arm the rest of the way off and impaled the knife into soft dirt. It came out clean.

"That's weird," Kaidan shook his head.

Shepard handed him the arm by its wrist. "Here, get started. You need more 'gel than I do."

Kaidan took the arm gingerly, shaking more of the "blood" out, and scanned it with his omnitool. "It sure is light," he observed, "Must be mostly composites. Or ceramics?"

Shepard was scanning the geth to determine where the computing center was actually housed. His VI converted the raw data into a more helpful analysis. "It looks like it's mostly plastics and…wait. Borophenes. The cores are full of them."

"Well, they still don't use very much. Look at how much the disassembler is rejecting."

Shepard looked up and saw the mass of gray non-metallic material collecting on the ground beneath Kaidan's omnitool as he fed the geth arm into the disassembler. "How much did you get?"

"Two. Maybe three."

"The scanner says there's no significant computing until you get to here," He pointed with the tip of the knife. "I'm hoping the legs will have more metals."

"One way to find out," Kaidan said. He rose from a crouch, walked to the extended leg of the geth, and started the disassembler on it. It looked very much as if the geth was being eaten by Kaidan's omnitool.

"This is a lot more disturbing than breaking down small arms," Shepard said through his teeth.

"Yeah… their arms are the same size as ours. Not that small at all."

Shepard gave him a look somewhere between a reprimand and exasperation.

Kaidan shrugged, "Hey, just trying to lighten things up."

Shepard grunted and turned back to where he had the geth under his knife. Allowing another centimeter of margin, he plunged the knife straight down, and proceeded to cut so as to keep the computing centers intact. It felt like cutting through celery.

"Seems to be even less metal here than in the arm," Kaidan noted, "Must be a composite endoskeleton." He focused on the display. "And there's nanofactured machinery in here; there's more usable material here than I thought."

Shepard detached the other arm and paused at the head. "We keep our brains in our heads; that doesn't mean they do."

Alenko glanced up only briefly from his disassembly. "Is that armor right there? On the head? Does it detach?"

Shepard pulled at the outer layer, and found that it slid off easily if pulled along the axis. "Guess so." He laid the two pieces aside and paused. "Wait a minute." As he rose, he spotted the enemy weapon. The broken pieces of his own rifle were just a short distance away; he detoured in that direction, picked them up and ran the fragments into his disassembler.

"They don't have much armor themselves, so they must rely heavily on shielding," he walked over to the geth rifle, "But it seems odd that they'd design ammo to work as well against their own defensive tech." He scanned the weapon, studied the results. "No booby-traps on the rifle…though that's almost always a bad idea."

"For unaugmented humans, yes. But these are machines."

Shepard nodded thoughtfully. He scanned the weapon again, more closely and thoroughly. "There just doesn't seem to be any exotic tech here." His VI identified and marked them in differing colors ThruView on his ARO, and he spoke the names aloud, "Power interface, sight computing, linac, ammo block, WINC..." He looked around, checking the map display for nearby threats while waiting for the suit VI to assemble and render a simulation of the weapon. "Alenko, can you stay on alert for a minute? I want to do a Firefight VRS on this thing."

"Wait a minute, let me finish this arm." Kaidan's disassembler spat out the last of the unusable material with a fizz and a chirp. He checked his rifle settings and fitted it to his shoulder, aiming at the horizon, though his eyes were on his ARO's sensor display. "Okay, I'm on."

Shepard accelerated into VRS, interacting virtually with the alien weapon at four times normal speed; conservative but reliable…and it didn't make his head hurt. He picked up the virtualized weapon, examining it in minute detail. His engineering background made it apparent how it worked as a weapon; aside from its relative fragility as a club there was nothing out of the ordinary. (Shepard had been in the virtual meeting when the Avenger RFQ was being written; some curmudgeon had demanded a weapon that could be used to beat an enemy senseless and still be able to fire.)

The most interesting thing about the weapon was how compactly it could fold up. He noted that it was designed to be easily pincered at several places along its grip, and that if held in his open hand, he could activate it just by squeezing his hand closed; the grip opened right into his palm, and the components sprang into position fast enough that he didn't have to wait for it to finish once he'd lifted it to his shoulder.

He opened and closed the virtual weapon a few more times. The grip-first deployment was quite clever; as fast as it was, it still gave him instant control over where he could aim the weapon even before it was fully configured. The SmartPak was able to grip it, and it could be disassembled with one hand.

Finally, he squeezed the trigger, and a message appeared in his line of sight:  
**Test firing successful.  
****Estimated mean cyclic rate: 120 RPS  
****Muzzle velocity: 2814 m/s**

Satisfied, he slid back down into realtime.

"Done," said Jenkins.

"Nice timing," Shepard knelt and picked up the geth weapon, raised it to his shoulder and squeezed the trigger carefully. The weapon was relatively quiet, and more stable than an Avenger.

Satisfied, he lifted it over his shoulder; the SmartPak grabbed it with a quick servo hum, and his ARO displayed the successful docking with a green status pixel that faded quickly. "Alenko, how are you for omnigel?"

"33," he answered. "Even that other mech…um, _geth_… will only get me to 45 or so."

"There's another one over there," Shepard pointed up the hill, "You need help?"

"No, I got it." Kaidan started toward the nearer enemy, "What do you think of their assault rifle?"

"I'm impressed," Shepard started walking back to where Richard lay. "Deploys faster than the Avenger, and grip first. Seems like it'd be better against shields. Not much good if you suddenly need a club, though."

Richard had laid the completed stretcher to his left, and was accessing civilian channels. The audio was limited to Jenkins' helmet, but the video showing on his omnitool's holographic interface showed the security camera view of another part of the colony.

Shepard crouched beside him. "How are they doing?"

"I think they're fine…my family, I mean. I'm not seeing any fighting out west. We live far enough out that they may only have heard about the attack. My older sister would be over to see them today – because it's Sunday – and so she's fine, too. I think. My other brothers are still in school, so they live at home."

"Glad to hear your family's okay," Shepard agreed, "Do you have any intel on the colony?" He started picking up the pieces of Jenkins' armor and feeding them back into his disassembler.

Jenkins paused, gave Shepard a guilty look. "No, sir. I was trying to raise them directly. I haven't gotten through yet. Comm is either flooded or being deliberately jammed. But we live...I mean _they_ live...on the other side of the colony from the spaceport, so I'm thinking they're okay." He shrugged, winced. "I'd rather know."

"But you know the geth landed at or near the spaceport?"

"Yes, sir. Uh…a local news says they crossed over the towers on the way in, and fired on approach, but set down at Douglas and deployed more ground troops from there. It looks like the ship they came in is huge…like…dreadnought size."

"They've landed a _dreadnought_?" Shepard wondered if the shape they had seen just before the transmission was cut off was what had landed. "I hope Trident can tell that from the—"

Nihlus' voice interrupted, "Lot of burned out buildings here, Shepard. A looooot of bodies. I'm going to check it out. I'll try to catch up with you at the dig site."

Jenkins turned his head toward Shepard, but there was no way to see his grin behind the breather. "Should we tell him the Captain said 'radio silence'?"

"You do that," Shepard replied.

"As soon as we get back," Jenkins agreed.

"Alenko, how you doing?"

"All done," came the reply. "Looks like you picked up the only working weapon, so I gelled one of the other two. I'm at 70. Jenkins, you want this other one? How much 'gel you got?"

The Corporal glanced at his omnitool. "94, but I'm good." He glanced at Shepard. "How you doin', sir?"

Shepard could hear Kaidan approaching; his ARO read, **78**.

"Looks like it's yours, Lieutenant."

"Thanks, guys," Kaidan activated his Disassembler, shredding the geth weapon into component molecules. Shepard gestured with his head to Kaidan, "You want to get positioned down there to handle his leg? I suspect you're better trained."

"You bet." Kaidan stepped over Richard as the last of the weapon dissolved into its raw materials. "How you feeling?"

"Worried about my family," Richard didn't look away from his omnitool, "Especially since I still can't reach them." His hands stopped moving briefly. "Kind of embarrassed about getting shot."

Kaidan snorted, "Yeah, like that was your fault. I saw what happened. You were outflanked by a microUAV. We didn't know they were so small or maneuverable. Don't worry about it."

"Yeah." Jenkins seemed unconvinced. "Still no more bad guys?"

Shepard was already watching his ARO, "Not yet. Gonna want you ERA soon, though."

"I feel good enough to _walk_," Jenkins objected.

Kaidan glanced at the medical data scrolling up part of his ARO and nodded. "I'm sure you do. And I'm sure you're not."

"We should only need 30 minutes for it to set up, right?" Shepard asked. "The braces holding your exoskeleton together will keep you mobile if we get in trouble after that."

Kaidan waved his lit gauntlet over Jenkins' leg, "Can you feel your lower leg yet?"

Richard didn't move, trying to feel without looking. "No, sir. Should I?"

Kaidan shook his head, "Not from what I see here, but I'm just a medtech. This thing says the bone is assembling well, but it'll still take a while for it to fully harden. The gel will actively maneuver recoverable tissue so it's correctly aligned, and force out any foreign matter like shrapnel or unsigned cybernetics. Then it decharges the rest of the gel and forms skin if it can. BioTape helps a lot."

After placing Richard on the stretcher, Shepard rose and looked ahead. "Let's move." He pointed to Kaidan, then to the "foot" end of the stretcher. He moved to the "head end," bent and gripped the stretcher's lateral handle with his left hand, drew his pistol from its powerclip with the other.

Kaidan kept talking to Richard, "Also helps if you're on a PMA. I worked in a military hospital as a biotics liaison, got to know something about medigel. Even fulfilled a course requirement for my medical rating with some of my volunteer time in the ER. You still need fast, ultrahigh-resolution printers to make omnigel, but I'll tell ya, those things ran _non-stop_."

Shepard suspected Kaidan was demonstrating good bedside manner; talking to Richard to keep his mind off the weird itching and possible pain he would surely be feeling, even while his PMA was active.

He accelerated his awareness to 4x to give himself more time to evaluate their path forward while watching the sensors. Environmental noise continued to arrive at what sounded like a normal pitch, but the duration of sounds was slightly extended; his footfalls seemed strangely loud. He holstered the pistol, and took hold of the stretcher with both hands.

"Medigel has saved more lives in the thirty years it's been out than almost every other medical technology ever invented," Kaidan continued, "It never ceases to amaze me that Sirta practically gives the licenses – and the stuff itself – away." They continued to move uphill through the field of vertical outcroppings, and around to the right near the hill's crest.

As they approached the top of the hill, the obvious path veered right, through a small stand of trees.

"The trees look like they have wide bases…but they're _flat_," Kaidan observed.

Richard pointed. "Dad says this area floods pretty regularly, and you can tell which way the water goes by how the trees grow. It even affects how the rocks seem to line up…path of least resistance, you know?"

Shepard's ARO tagged a glint of metal at 11 meters; the suit indicated it smelled of explosives. "Hold," he said.

Behind him, Kaidan stopped.

Shepard's helmet optics zoomed and began to analyze it. Shepard weaved his head to the left and right slightly, giving the sensor better depth perception.

**SLAPM**, said the ARO. _A Self-Launching Anti-Personnel Mine._ Shepard didn't recognize the design, assumed it unfriendly.

"Alenko, can you hit that thing in one shot? I can't see through the scope of the geth rifle."

"Hang on," said Kaidan, bringing his pistol to bear. Its scope looked straight down the linear accelerator; the view was displayed on his ARO. Kaidan put the crosshairs on it and squeezed the trigger.

The mine exploded in a burst of orange and a small black cloud.

"Nice shot, sir," Jenkins piped up.

"Expert," agreed Shepard. "Let's hope we don't miss any others. Can I have your eyes on this task?"

"Only if my life depends on it," Kaidan nodded.

Jenkins snorted a laugh. "'Only if my life depends on it,'" he giggled, "That's funny, sir."

Kaidan shook his head. "Nope…just so old, it's new again."

They went another 80 meters or so; Shepard spotted another object. "Hold."

Kaidan also squinted at the white box, "Could they have deployed more than one type of automated RPG?"

"To use against _civilians_?" Jenkins was aghast. "That…that's just barbaric!"

Shepard scowled and sighed. "Yeah…welcome to your first shooting war, Corporal. It gets worse. It always gets worse."

Richard had elevated his rifle above his body and aimed it at the object so he could see it without getting up. "That's not a weapon. It's an unused box…of…" He couldn't quite read the lettering, "Aw, I can't tell. But I know the store that wrapped it. Mussy's is a sports and fitness equipment group. It's…well, if it is what it looks like, it's harmless. It looks like someone just left it. Or dropped it."

"Let's set him down," Kaidan said. As they set down the stretcher, Kaidan raised his weapon, but continued to look for other objects.

Shepard drew his sniper rifle, sighted down the unknown. "They've distracted us before," he said, "I'm starting to think they travel in threes so that one can draw fire, the second can locate the target, and the third can flank it. They might swap data by CobbleStone, or something like it."

Kaidan moved as he spoke, "What one sees, all see?"

"It's a good idea, if you can avoid data overload." As Shepard's VI took and analyzed Doppler readings, the Certainty Level was rising on his ARO.

Kaidan, looking through his scope, read from the side of the box, "Guh-wart Camouflage, Scorpion all-weather…?"

Richard was the expert again, "Guwart hunters?" He stretched his rifle up as high as he could, but still could not see past or over enough of the tall, yellow grasses. "Somebody left a guwart-hunting suit in the original box?"

"It's got a Qcode and a TID," Shepard observed. "It looks like a sealed shipping box, all right." He drew his pistol, aimed beside the box and fired a single shot next to it.

Nothing happened.

Shepard remained suspicious. "It can't be anything we'll care about."

"Couldn't hurt to look," Kaidan suggested.

"Then I'll do it. Cover me." As Shepard approached the white packing container, he spun up his shields, reached for the foil seal of the box with the acceleration tuner on the muzzle of his rifle. The seal crumpled and tore, the lid sprang open when he released it. Inside was what looked like desert camouflage armor. Shepard tipped the box over, prodded the armor.

Watching closely from his relatively safe distance, Kaidan shook his head. "You actually need armor to hunt these goo-art things?"

"Yeah, you _actually_ do," Jenkins replied, "But the weekend warriors like to dress up like soldiers anyway. It's kind of like a bear, and if you don't take out the eyes, it'll tear you apart. But they're night hunters, and they have big eyes, so it's not that hard…you just have to not get confused by the nostrils. They drop right out of the trees. Usually, they crush or stun whatever they drop on. The armor can save your life…if you're all _that _stupid about it. But the armor looks all _hooah_…I think that's the real reason why they buy it."

"You be okay here for a minute?"

"Sure thing, sir." He glanced around at his surroundings, and suddenly pointed. "Hey, look…that's a guwart blind! Someone must have stashed this stuff up here. And those trees we just came through…that's the sort of place where you'd find 'em."

Kaidan sauntered over to where Shepard was inspecting the armor. He reached into the blind and lifted out a few ammo modifiers. "Chemical and antipersonnel ammo mods."

"Yeah, you need that," Jenkins continued, "If you miss the eyes, they'll get real mad. Run you down. Really tough and really, _really_ aggressive. That's why the guart blinds are like that…it's like a reinforced bunker. Might even be a grenade in there."

There was; Kaidan held it up. "Hunting with grenades? Isn't that like fishing with dynamite?"

Jenkins was shaking his head. "Sir…you do _not_ want one of these things to get you. They're all teeth and claws. Climbs those trees like…at a run, and will attack things bigger than itself if it's desperate or threatened. They work in groups, too. Intelligent. Mean." He paused thoughtfully. "Sorta like Captain Krause."

"I thought you said these hunter guys wear the armor to feel all tough."

"You wear the armor if you have Brain One in your head because it'll save your life. It just also happens to a big ego booster, too. Why even bother to hunt them in the first place?" He was on a rant now, his self-restraint relaxed by the PMA. "You can _print out_ almost anything you care to eat anymore, and there are easier ways to keep the things from wandering into town. Nobody hunts because they have to, or because they're hungry...they hunt because it's a big oo-_look-what-a-tough-guy-I-am_ thing. Idiots."

Shepard looked up from the box. "I was going to 'gel it, but this description says it has shields and medigel conduits. It just doesn't have adaptive camouflage."

Kaidan held a piece of the armor up so they could see it, and waved it toward Richard. "He could use a new leg. Will it integrate with an Onyx?"

Shepard consulted his omnitool's Library. After a pause, he shook his head. "No, it won't."

"How about this…the camouflage on this suit is optimal for this environment. I'll bet I can get the outer layer of that armor on in three minutes, and we can get Jenkins into new leg pieces."

Shepard noted that the specs were almost twice what the Onyx armor offered. He looked up from his omnitool. "You've got two minutes. Get that leg off first and I can get it on Jenkins." He walked over to where the young man lay on the stretcher.

"Keep an eye on the radar," Kaidan said as he began to remove the outer layer of his own armor, "And you don't want to put it on him yet; the braces are still holding him together."

Shepard waved his omnitool over Jenkins, read the results. "Looks like _you're_ moving right along," he said, "Your suit's telling me you'll be ready to walk in another few minutes."

"Here it is; just put it on the stretcher with him." Kaidan tossed the lower leg armor so it landed next to Shepard, scattering dirt as it did.

Jenkins was getting talkative, "Hey, Lieutenant? Remember when you asked if I could feel my leg? I can't feel my leg, but I can feel my big toe. And a couple of others. Wow, this is so konko. I can't feel my leg, but I can feel my toes."

"Can you wiggle them?"

A pause. "No…I can't." He sounded worried.

"That's good, that's really good," Kaidan reassured him. "Don't worry. I'm changing into the goo-wart hunting armor and you can use the leg plates from mine."

"It's _guwart_, sir."

"You say potato," Kaidan hefted a large piece of the armor, "I say spud."

***** Glossary *****

ARO: Augmented Reality Overlay

CobbleStone: a visual-data aggregation software module developed in the 2060s that allows swarms to collect environmental information from multiple camera angles (or other scanning media) and thereby build up a cohesive 3D map of an area relatively quickly.

ER: Emergency Room

ERA: Expert, ready and able – The phrase "ready and able" has seen use in the military for centuries; the recent addition of "Expert" arose during the advent of Digital Knowledge Transfer (DKT). Whether by DKT or experience, "Expert" indicates both field-specific knowledge, and the possessor if it.

linac: linear accelerator

MilComReq: Military Command Requisitions. A database of apps and printable devices approved/recommended for Alliance operations.

NNP: Nanotech Neurological Preservative. After the rise in popularity of cryogenic preservation, a short-term "last aid" solution appeared for people who die quite remote from a cryo facility to prevent damage to the brain while awaiting transport. As of 2180, NNP is effective for about five to seven months, depending on the conditions at death (hydration, temperature, type of damage if any, etc.) Normally a 2cc cell of NNP is integrated into a user's omnitool, but First Responders (paramedics, SAR, CFR, and other First Aid Personnel) are nearly always equipped with NNP injectors.

PMA: Pain Management Application

RFQ: Request For Quote. A document issued to potential contractors for production or design of a product. Often includes design requirements and operational constraints.

SmartPak: an integrated weapons carrier worn as the back panel for compatible standard armor types. Active hardpoint controllers are linked to standard combat VIs so that a soldier has only to reach for the weapon for it to unlock and begin decompaction. Also automatically connects to weapons and allows them to finish compaction when being secured.

TID: Thing Identifier: A unique base-36 identifier for products or unique pieces that uses RFID [Radio Frequency ID] when polled to identify itself. Number is often printed or otherwise applied to the object.

VRS: Virtual Reality Simulation. A simulation of a process or device in VR for analytical purposes.

WINC: Weapons Intelligence Network Computing


	4. Chapter 4: Ashley Williams

A/N - Sorry, this is my first story, so I'm making mistakes, and going back to correct them takes a bit of time. There are terms and acronyms in here that may be unfamiliar; each chapter has a glossary at the end so you can flip down to the bottom, find out what it is, and then go back. (I tried it with the full name in parentheses, but it was too distracting to the scene and dialogue flow.)

This chapter is rated MA for death by impalement, a firefight, and language.

***** Ashley Williams *****

Gunnery Chief Ashley Williams pulled the door shut behind her, breathing heavily.

Uly Guiterrez was beside himself, "Why did you shoot as we were _running away_? They might not have seen us if we just ran away _quietly_!"

"Have you seen the guns they're using? It's like our shields aren't even up!"

"I know, I know! That's why we had to get in here." He was rummaging through the boxes in the little prefab like a madman, "Get out your shield generator."

"What?"

He pointed frantically over his shoulder without looking. "Get your shield generator out of your…backpack thing. SmartPak. Hurry!" From the scattered equipment on the floor, he started grabbing items and slapping them atop the nearest crate.

Ash sat down and released the backclip section to the floor, where it landed with a metallic _klank_. Holding her torso plate on with one hand, she flipped the backplate over and clicked the shield module out of it, rolled it across the floor toward him.

Ulysses "Uly" Guiterrez, one of the tech contractors who worked at the Alliance base "Sargon," had been at home when the geth had landed. At first, Ash had thought this was bad, but after the base was hit, and her unit decimated, she realized he was probably safe, and she knew where to find him. She had found him driving his 6-wheeled ground car _toward_ the base, apparently trying to get weapons.

They had been ambushed by geth. Uly's go-buggy had been destroyed, and now they were on the run, trying to find other Alliance soldiers or armed civilians.

He grabbed the shield generator before it rolled to a stop, pulled it open, and used a set of forceps to extract components. "Use your motion sensor thing…if they start heading for us, we need to get out of here."

"Suit's already in Combat Mode," she checked the display on her ARO anyway, "But you need a weapon. Do you know how to use a pistol? Or an assault rifle?"

"Uh...I keep a shotgun under my desk on base." He looked away from his work for a second in thought. "No help there."

"Shotgun's a great idea," Ash said. She pulled her shotgun off its holster and put it on the crate in front of him as he worked. Generator sliprods rolled around the crate as it was jostled; Ash moved the weapon to keep them from rolling off the edge. "What are you doing there?"

Uly asked, "Did you see the cyclic rate on those weapons they were using? Your shields will need a fast recovery rate and lots of up-front power, and I can make the mods with this stuff."

"But they were using specialized ammo," Ash put her back to the door, watching the motion sensor on her ARO. "Whatever they're firing, it was designed to cut right through shields."

"Yeah, I remember," he spoke as though distracted, "I'm going to put _everything_ into this generator, but…I'll be keeping you between me and them."

"You're going to _hide behind_ me?" Ash was furious, "That's my _job_, you loon! You're a contractor…a _civilian_! I'll kick your ass if you _don't_!"

Uly glanced self-consciously over his shoulder, then quickly back to his work. "I know…but it…seems unfair."

Ash's sensor display flashed a highlight, showing motion outside, at about 100 meters to the east. "Speaking of unfair, we got bad guys. Not sure if they're moving this way yet. You about done?"

"Adding an upgrade mod to your suit is easy. _Building_ the mod from spare parts isn't." He worked in silence for a minute, then slid the two halves back together, and turned to the white-armored soldier. "Where's your back…oh." He reached down and picked up the backpanel and SmartPak, fitted the shield generator into place, and held it up. "Turn around, I'll put it on for you."

Ash was still watching the motion sensor; as Uly pressed the back section into place, the interconnects clacked and whirred briefly as they lined up. Her ARO showed a new shield rating of **260**.

"Damn, I didn't even know they could go that high." She pointed, "Don't forget the gun."

He reached for it, brought it up close to his face.

"The saftey's on the other side. Quick, let's go!" She peeked the door open, slid it aside. They ran around to the back of the container, hurried up the hill, and scrambled down the other side.

Uly pointed, "What are those?"

A row of gray, meter-high cylinders on tripods irregularly lined the side of the footpath.

_Dragon's Teeth!_ Ash thought, _God, I can't tell him!_ "They're sure as hell _not ours_. Come on, run!" No matter which way she looked, there seemed to be motion signals on the sensor display. The infrared overlay did not match them, so they had to be more of the attacking robots. She led the way across the path and up another low ridge.

Finally, a motion signal with IFFs…Alliance soldiers! "_There's_ someone," she pointed up the hill, "Over that way. Hurry!"

Ash's sensors showed more robot signals to their left, heading their way, but the short-legged civilian also lacked her fitness and her training. He stumbled on his way down the next rise, crashing through scrub brush and falling. Ash ran back and grabbed one of his arms, "Come on! We can't stay here!" She glanced up, saw the geth approaching. She pushed him to the right, positioning herself between them, raised her rifle and fired, taking down two of the walking robots. "Run!"

They turned right, Ash leading them toward the people signal on the other side of a slight rise. Fast-moving targets appeared on her ARO's sensor overlay. _Flyers_, she thought, _Shit!_

As they started downhill, they found themselves running past more Dragon's Teeth. The whine of the flyers was close enough to hear; Ash sprinted past him, then stopped and spun left, firing. "Run, Uly, run! _RUN!_" Some of mechanized impalers were extended, with rapidly-drying human bodies impaled on them. Uly wheezed his way toward her, gaped in horror, stumbled one last time.

The flyers analyzed the situation quickly; the running human was still a threat; they accelerated and closed on her, targeted and fired.

The impact caused her to lose her footing, but the blue bolts simply rebounded from her enhanced shields. Knowing they were close enough to hit, she pulled her sidearm, threw herself onto her back in a skidding halt. As her awareness was accelerated into Firefight mode, her suit VI helped her lead them; three shots took down the two targets.

As the shrapnel fell out of the sky, she leaned up off the ground to see Uly lifted by a pair of the robots onto the impaler; there wasn't even time to call his name as the spike exploded through his back and out his chest, lifting him into the air.

She rolled and dove behind a large boulder, pulling the assault rifle off her back. Flattened against the rock, she realized she'd failed to protect the one civvie who'd managed to save her life.

_What will I tell Maria? Or Miguel and Sabrina?_

She grimaced, but would not cry; that would come later.

Her VI noticed the emotional surge and began releasing adrenaline modifiers to keep her head clear. It displayed on her ARO: ** Stabilon (Combat-grade) in effect.**

When she heard the sound of a robot weapon firing from where she thought the people were, she was suddenly angry. A line from one of her favorite childhood books came to mind, "If we must die today, let us sell ourselves dearly."

Her back against the rock, she raised her weapon to fire as a man appeared at the top of the ridge; an Alliance soldier! And he didn't look like he was running _from_ something; he fired one of the robots' weapons past her, and another soldier followed, hurling tech grenades ahead of him. The robots exploded in a shower of blue electrical arcs.

The three soldiers ran up to her. One of them - an N7 - asked, "Are you all right?"

Ash's suit systems fought to normalize her biochemistry. But even out of breath, and with her bloodstream flooded with useless and distracting chemicals, she knew enough to identify herself, "Gunnery Chief Ashley Williams of the 212. You the one in charge here, sir?"

The N7 indicated the other two soldiers. "We're from the _Normandy_, here to secure a research find. But it looked like you were getting hammered."

"You saw our message? You saw that…_thing_?"

"That...black hand-shaped thing? Only a couple of frames of it, and only an hour ago. Where's the rest of your unit?"

"Oh, man…" Ash felt suddenly distressed, as if she'd been called to account. "We were on patrol, just walking the perimeter, when these things…they looked like rocks…dropped out of the sky." She was getting more traumatized as she recalled the events, "Then they stood up and started shooting at us. We were surrounded…by mechs…and tried to double back, but they were _everywhere_. We got split up. I don't think any of the others…" her eyes flowed over ARO information, "I think…I'm…the only one left."

"This isn't your fault, Williams," Shepard said quickly, "There wasn't anything you could have done." Kaidan stepped up to Ashley's suit, took readings and copied files as Shepard continued, "So…someone airdropped mechs on you?"

"No, not mechs, they were shaped wrong, almost alien-like. Wrong wrong wrong. And they moved too fast, worked together _way_ too well. If they'd been mechs, we've seen…god…forty million credits' worth of them today."

"I'd like to hit you with a cognitive stabilizer," Kaidan interrupted, "It'll help you feel better."

"Do it," Shepard said.

"Not your call, sir," Kaidan reminded him.

"He's right, I need it. And a shot of ET3. I'm going to have goddamned _hysterics_ about the people I lost today, but _this_ is not the time." She glanced intensely over her shoulder, "Come on, what are you waiting for?"

Kaidan shrugged, thumbed a reader on Williams' suit, worked his omnitool.

Ash took a breath, held it, and then exhaled with her eyes closed. "That's better." She raised her left arm, and lit her own omnitool gauntlet. "Nobody knew the ship design. It was too big and too fast. Might be a new species. But my VI is telling me that the robots we saw are…geth." She looked up at Shepard. "Geth?!"

"Crazy, isn't it?" Kaidan nodded, "No one's seen geth beyond the Veil in over two hundred years."

"So they weren't just hiding out, they were building a fleet of dreadnoughts?" Ash shook her head, "And they've had _centuries_ to do it. They could have hundreds of those things!"

"Could they be here for…that…you know…the thing?" Richard asked.

"What, the beacon?" replied Ash. The _Normandy _team looked at her expectantly. "That's what the scientists have been calling it. There's a light on it, and it blinks. Can you imagine? A buried old light that still works."

Shepard exchanged a glance with Kaidan, then turned back to Ash.

"Do you know anything else about it?" Shepard asked.

"No, sir. But the scientists are real excited about it. The dig site is close; it's just at the end of this vale. If you're here to pick up the beacon, it might still be there. I'd heard they didn't want to move it until they had a place to move it _to_."

Shepard held his rifle aloft. "All right. Before we move out, I'm declaring a squad update override; adding Williams to the fireteam in position 4, switch LOSI comms to Main Channel C, scrambler synch on Williams." His suit winked status lights on his ARO as the suit VIs communicated with each other and adjusted.

"Alenko here."

"Jenkins here."

"Williams here, and synch is on me."

"Good," Shepard nodded, satisfied the comm links were updated. He tapped his own faceplate. "Williams, reconfigure your helmet to breather mode for added stealth."

"Sir." She lit her gauntlet, flipped a toggle. With the buzz-clicks of decompaction, her helmet chinguard extended armor to the bottom of the visor, sealed and pressurized the helmet.

"Can you take us to the dig site, Williams?"

She brought up her rifle and clacked the ammo block into place. "Can do, sir. And if we see some more of those _geth_, it'll be time for payback."

She turned, and hadn't taken two steps before she glanced left and saw the spike with Uly's body on it. She faltered, stopped.

As he approached, Kaiden looked where she was looking. He slowed and stopped by her side. "Was that…did you know him?"

Ash struggled to find words, "He's a friend…he…helped me after my unit had been wiped out. His work…on my shields…is the only reason I'm alive. But I'm…I couldn't…help him." Gritting her teeth, she looked away.

Shepard's ARO popped up a message that Ash's neurotronics were signaling for more ET3. "Alenko, she needs..."

"I got it," the biotic answered, and authorized the release of more of the stabilizer.

Shepard looked grimly at the spike, felt his face contort into a grimace. He asked, "Did they _just_ do this? Can we help him?"

"A few minutes ago," Ash replied, and stepped toward the spike. "I don't know."

Shepard followed, fabbing a tech relay as he approached. "Maybe I can short it out and get him down. If this is just an impaling…" He reached as high as he could, waved his omnitool left and right. Kaiden was just stepping up as Shepard's ARO displayed the readings.

Kaidan looked as if he was simply reading from his gauntlet. "He's…comatose."

Shepard attached the tech relay to the impaler, took a step back, set off a directional EMP. The relay exploded, leaving a hand-sized scorch mark on the impaler, but had no other effect.

Kaiden looked at his own omnitool. "He's in electronic _stasis_. That spike is keeping him alive, but…no fluids are moving. What the hell…?"

Shepard tapped the spike experimentally, it sounded metallic. He pointed east. "Can you catch him in a lift field? I'm going to push him that way."

Kaiden stepped over to where Shepard had indicated. Shepard leaned against the vertical, then stood again. "That's pretty sturdy." He tried lifting the one leg of the tripod; it wouldn't budge. "How are they doing this?" He knelt at the base of the leg, scratched at the dirt beneath it, dug briefly. "It's extended a stake into the ground." He glanced at Ash, "Do you know what this thing is doing?"

"No," she shook her head.

Shepard moved quickly to another leg, pulled up on it; again, no good.

He was getting frantic. He drew his pistol. "Stand back," he said, aiming at the leg. Five rounds left two tiny scratches. He traded his pistol for his shotgun, fired repeatedly. Still nothing.

Now he was feeling incompetent, and it made him angry. He stepped back, pointed up at the body. "Alenko, can you just lift him off there?"

"You bet," answered the biotic, flaring with visible energy.

"Whoa," murmured Richard, "Awesome."

Kaidan lifted a hand, and Uly's arms and legs rose in response, but his body didn't move up the spike.

"Wait a minute." Ash walked up to the tripod, pressed experimentally on the pulsating blue ring. "Corporal, can you give me a handstep?"

"You bet, ma'am." Richard stepped forward, but Kaidan put an arm in his way.

"No, let me. You're still healing. At least give yourself a few more minutes." He approached, linked the fingers of both hands, bent slightly.

Ash put a foot into his hands, her other foot on the ring, and lifted herself up to Uly's body. She pressed upward, but couldn't move him. "Why won't you move," she said with rising intensity, "Uly, why won't you move? Wake up! We've got...to get...you off this." She was straining visibly.

Shepard raised his omnitool again, set to Transopter Medical. The system revealed that the spike had horizontal prongs that must have extended after the original impaling. "The thing's got spikes _sideways_," he said. "And it looks like they're extending from the central…one." He drew back slowly as Ash stepped back down.

They stood silently, each with their own thoughts, but all offended that _this_ – what it was their job to prevent – had happened anyway.

"Sir?" Richard took a step closer, "I think you have to let him go. There's…nothing you can do. Sir."

Kaidan turned. "He's right, we've got to go. We need to secure that beacon."

Reluctantly, Shepard took another step away. "Williams, come on, we're leaving."

Richard looked away and down, not wanting to be looking at Shepard if the Commander looked his way. "Hey look, a shotgun." He looked up again, "At least…he went down fighting."

"It's my shotgun," Ash said. "And he never fired it." She picked it up mechanically, replaced it on her SmartPak.

"Come on, we need to go," Kaidan moved away in the direction Williams had started earlier.

"Right, we've lost some time," Shepard agreed, chiding himself silently, "Thanks for the reminder. Williams, get us to that dig site. Jenkins? How you doing?"

The young Corporal was still looking up at the impaled body. "I'm okay." He patted his own torso quickly, "I'm still okay. I'll be okay," he said, turning.

"Alenko, can Jenkins make double-time?"

Kaidan glanced at the clock on his ARO. "Yeah, he should be fine. I wouldn't jump from two meters, but he should be okay to double-time. You can wiggle your toes, right?"

He stopped, balanced on his right foot, wiggled his left foot. "Yep. Feels like normal. Uh, a little weak, but not hurting."

Shepard stopped, glanced over a shoulder. "Williams, you're on point. Get us there. Okay, everyone, we're double-timing it. We got time to make up. Let's go!" As Williams jogged past him, he continued, "Alenko, two, Jenkins three. I'll bring up the rear. Remember to _check your targets_, we got a field full of civvies."

They had just started jogging when Kaidan asked, "That man was still alive when they stuck him on the spike?"

"Yeah," Ash replied, "Impaling victims instead of just shooting them. There must be a reason." She kicked at a rock as she jogged along, "They want us to _suffer_."

"Classic psychological warfare," Kaidan thought aloud, "They're using terror as a tactic."

"Damn damn dammity damn…" Ash was synchroizing the double-time march to her stream of whispered obscenities, and as she went, she got creative (so to speak). Two more spikes on their left had bodies that were much more shriveled, almost dried-out. Ash jogged along, acting like she wasn't looking at them.

Shepard noted the emotional detachment he was feeling, and silently thanked his own Alliance neural nanotech for keeping his head clear.

_Just at the end of this vale_ turned out to be about half a kilometer. Jenkins had a little trouble keeping up, not because of his injury, but because his brain hadn't stopped pumping out endorphins; he kept falling behind, looking at every vista or plant as if for the first time. Shepard kept him on task.

A window popped open on his ARO: ** Williams, A.: You need a leash for that one?**

Shepard's SRS app popped up a window notifying him that Jenkins' Combat VI had nearly finished compensating for his overreaction. He gestured for a text response, and said, "Give him three minutes. He's green, but has great attitude. And he's _from_ here, so he might react differently."

Williams, leading the way, stopped short of the top of a hill. "They're at the dig site, too. Light 'em up!"

Watching Ash pull her Banshee off her SmartClip and check its settings, Shepard pointed a finger at his Corporal, then right and up to the top of the hill. "Jenkins. Sniper rifle. Top of the hill. Watch for incoming."

Combat direction seemed to help the Corporal focus. "Sir. Sniper rifle. Top of the hill. Will advise of any new targets." He turned and jogged to the top of the next rise. As Richard passed Kaidan, Shepard noticed the lieutenant checking his pistol, a Kessler with biotic hardening.

"Alenko, with me." Shepard pointed briefly at Kaidan, then ahead. "Talk to me, Williams. Whaddya see?" He started forward, gestured for acceleration.

"Bad robots," she answered, "Three of 'em. They moved to cover as we approached. I'm not getting sensor EM, but they're all in cover, and they're between us and the site."

Shepard, now running at a cognitive 2x, switched his ARO to see what Williams' suit was seeing. Nothing was moving or showing on the sensor display.

"Movement, no heat signature?" He pulled his sniper rifle off his back, watched it configure.

"Yes, sir."

"Think they're defending the site?"

"They're positioned behind cover with respect to us, so I'm pretty sure." She gestured to her Combat VI, and the locations of the three geth were added to the display so the team could see it, "I've got a few RPGs left."

"I recommend sniper rifle. Jenkins, you got the twenty on these guys?"

"Yes, sir!" The boyish Corporal sounded eager for combat. _That's dangerous._

"Corporal."

"Sir?"

"You _fit for duty_?"

"Expert, Ready and Able, sir."

_That's better_, Shepard thought. "Good; stay frosty. I'm not writing any letters today." He studied the display. "Alenko, can you Lift that closest one without leaving cover?"

Kaidan peeked the sensor on his helmet up over the top of the rock. "Not from here. But I could probably jump up and get him."

"Team comes first," Shepard said, "You got enough shielding?"

"120-820. I could maybe do it while behind a barrier, but it'd be more accurate without."

"Okay, when you do that, I'm going to stand and take him out; hopefully the other two will come out of cover to fire on me. When they do, Williams, Jenkins, you take them down. Ready?"

Green lights on Shepard's ARO indicated they were. He gestured to accelerate his neurotronics to 4x, replaced his sniper rifle, pulled the geth weapon off his back and waited for it to configure. "Alenko, you call it."

Silence.

"These guys don't move at all, do they?" Kaidan sounded amazed, "This'll be tough." He shifted slightly. "Okay…ready? Go!"

To his left, Shepard watched the biotic spring up, seem to throw a glowing purple ball overhand. The projectile came down on the far side of a rock and splashed; a single geth ascended, writhing in the energy field. Shepard stood quickly with weapon fitted, planted his feet, and held the trigger.

The geth, floating helplessly, erupted in sparks as the high-cyclic weapon tore it to pieces. Shepard may not have needed the high-stability stance for accurately firing the weapon, but it helped him withstand the fire he took from the two geth that turned their weapons on him.

As he dropped back into cover, he noticed that his shields had been completely shot away, but he also saw Ash and Richard firing on the organic-looking robots just before he was safely in cover again.

Giving his shields time to recharge, he poked the scope of his weapon over the top of the rock before remembering he could not use the geth weapon in periscope mode. He traded it to his other hand and quickly pulled his pistol, snapped off the safety and was just in time to see the two remaining geth destroyed.

"I think we got 'em, Commander," said Kaidan.

Shepard allowed himself a smile, "Good work, everyone. Well done." He aimed an index finger back at Richard, "Expert marksmanship, Jenkins; keep it up." As his shields finished recharging, he gestured the acceleration off, and rose from cover to survey the archaeological find; a series of concentric circular platforms, the lowest at center, surrounded by a two-meter wall.

As he approached, his focus on the material prompted the suit VI to analyze it; the spectrometer indicated it was a ceramic polymer composite, and it seemed to have weathered like stone. He lifted his left arm, scanned the post and lintel nearest him. His transopter briefly put callouts on the ARO, showing the interconnecting structure of the joints. This was not the shattered remains of something larger, it had been _buried intact_. A glance at the reinforcing wall just beyond showed it had been under perhaps 30 meters of dirt.

At the back of the dig were four more of the lethal spikes with bodies on them, another grim reminder.

Shepard frowned as he glanced at the mission clock. This was taking too long for just a pickup, but at least they had arrived at the dig site. "Alenko, I assume you're still down on 'gel. Process these things like we did the others. Jenkins, you help him. Williams, show me this beacon." He looked to his right and saw Ash about five meters away, pistol drawn, slowly aiming at the nearest fallen geth and firing deliberately, repeatedly. He counted her shots: three...four...five...six...seven...

Another shot rang out from high ground to the right. Ash's head looked like it exploded in sparks as she was thrown to the ground. **Antimateriel round**, indicated the ARO, putting a callout on the origin point of the shot.

"Williams!" Shepard's VI snapped him instantly into Firefight Mode, the callout locking in on the geth sniper at the top of the ridge. He pulled his pistol off its powerclip and fired before acceleration was fully engaged. Only one of the three shots hit near enough, knocking the shooter back from its perch and deeper into cover.

A tech relay hummed its way up to the geth; an electrical arc connected them briefly. The robot's left leg extended fully, as if it were trying to jump away, but putting it into Shepard's reticle. Fully accelerated, he was able to put a round right into its camera-eye.

Its body lurched back, then collapsed forward, tumbling off the ridge. Before it could bounce off the cliff face on its way down, Shepard was looking for the rest of the second party. _There should be two more_, he thought. The geth hit ground with a metallic _fump_, and slid to a stop.

Without taking his eyes off the cliff, Shepard pointed toward the fallen Gunnery Chief with his left hand, "Medic!"

Kaidan vaulted over the cover he'd been behind, "Medic on task!"

No other bad guys were visible on Shepard's ARO. Almost unwilling to believe the sensor anymore, he continued to scan for them.

"I'm okay, LT," said Ash. "Just...headache." She steadied herself on the rock nearby.

Kaiden sounded as incredulous as Shepard felt, "That was a _six-gram round_," he held up a hand, thumb and index finger extended, "You should have a hole in your head _this big_."

"I'm at 260-480…" she explained.

"260?!"

Ash sighed, "Uly…saved my life again."

"What?"

"That guy – on the spike – that we couldn't save? His name is…_was _Ulysses Guiterrez. He built this shield mod for me…a few minutes before they…killed him. He'd seen they were tearing through our shields, so he traded recharge speed for strength."

"Yeah, but 260?" Kaidan shook his head, "Well, you can't argue with success."

Shepard gave up trying to find more geth for the moment. "All right, well done. Alenko; good, quick thinking with the relay. Williams…mm…good work getting us all worried."

Ash shook her head, "I'm still worried. Seeing stars. Should be okay in a minute, though."

Kaidan walked around behind her, inspected her suit, "Let me have a look, Chief." He put up a hand to provide some shadow, moved his head to see better. "Well, you sure got the shields for it. I suspect we're all going to want them."

Shepard frowned. "No kidding. These..._geth..._are trouble. They always send more, and they're always getting smarter about us. We really stepped in it this time. But that's why they pay us the big money, right? Williams, where's the beacon?"

Ash looked to the center of the circular array, then left and right. "This is the dig site. The beacon was right here, it must have been moved." She put both hands on the sides of her helmet and adjusted it.

Kaidan stepped up alongside her, facing Shepard. "By who? Our side or theirs?

"Hard to say. Maybe they know more at the research camp." She struggled with her helmet again, then gestured to her suit VI. The helmet opened, and she twisted it, and lifted it off. "Dammit, I think that shot cracked the outer shell." She inspected the helmet, banged a part of it with her left hand, and started to squeeze her head back into it. "Have to have a fabber replace that later."

In the distance, something emitted a hornlike wail, and the lonely sound resonated for a few seconds.

"What was _that_?" Kaidan looked up and left, then right.

"Gemmadarsis Hupfarii," Richard answered immediately. All eyes were instantly on him.

Kaidan recovered first. "What? You just know that?"

"My dad's a zoologist. I happen to know _that one_ because it's a good one for impressing the FOBs...the noobs. _Everyone_ hears that thing, and _everyone_ thinks it's some enormous monster or something." He held his hands up in front of him, a little less than a meter apart. "They're only about this big, _with the legs_."

"We just call 'em thrint," Ash added. "They ingest and excrete through the same hole. That sound is a 'thrint fart'."

Shepard chuckled and nodded approvingly.

Richard rounded quickly on her, "It's not a fart, it's a territorial marker—"

Ash gave him an icy look. "Same. Hole."

"Whatever," Shepard glanced at the spikes, "Come on, team; stay on task. Williams, where are the researchers? Think anyone got out of here alive?"

"If they were lucky. Maybe…hiding in the camp? The research camp's just up that rise," she waved her weapon up the incline.

"Okay, let's get going. We're are now officially behind schedule." Shepard jogged past them, and out of the Prothean circle, turning left up the dirt ramp. "Jenkins, get up here, assault rifle. I want you on point." That _should put some fear and sobriety in him,_ Shepard thought.

"Yes, sir!" By the slight waver in his voice, the directive seemed to have had its intended effect.

Shepard continued, "Team, switch to Assault rifles, maximum cyclic rate, minimum round size. Phasic rounds if you have 'em. Or hammerhead, so you at least get some extra stopping power."

As they jogged up the hill, their comms came alive again, "Change of plans, Shepard; there's a small spaceport just ahead. I want to check it out. I'm going to wait for you there."

"Who's that?" Ash asked.

"It's a Spectre!" Richard said, "We're on a mission with a Spectre!"

"Don't be one of the people that ends up dead," Shepard reminded him. "When you're behind schedule, that's the time to work _smarter_ not _faster_."

Richard stopped jogging as he reached the top of the rise. The first building on their right had fallen off its cantilever, and was billowing smoke. Equipment and debris littered the ground, and as they came further up, more spikes with bodies on them came into view. Everyone avoided looking closely at them, so no one saw the diodes and sensors that covered the emaciated bodies.

"Looks like they hit the camp hard," Ash said.

Kaidan glanced at rocks that might provide cover, "Good place for an ambush. Keep your guard up."

With a metallic shriek, the spikes suddenly retracted, and the bodies seemed to spring to life.

Kaidan stopped, took a step back. "Oh, god…they're still alive…!

The three humanoid things turned on the team and started running toward them.

Ash was clearly horrified, "What did the geth do to them?"

Richard backpedalled quickly, "What are they gonna do to _us_?"

Shepard plucked a grenade off his SmartPak at waist level and flung it at the ground between the team and the husks. "Hit the deck!" As the group of zombie-like things crossed over the disk, his suit VI detected this and detonated the grenade; the resulting explosion blew them to bits.

Richard stumbled backwards, collapsing over Shepard's prone body. "Oof! Ow! Sorry, sir."

Shepard rolled away, noticing the converted people had not retained enough soft tissue to splatter anything. He stood, extended a hand to the Corporal. "Is anyone on our team dead or injured?"

Richard took the proffered hand, and pulled himself unsteadily to his feet. "Thank you, sir. Uh…what?"

"Corporal, is anyone on our team dead or injured?"

Richard glanced quickly around, saw Ash and Kaidan. He looked dazedly back at Shepard, trembling slightly. "Uh…negative, sir."

"Then you have nothing to apologize for. But we still have to find that beacon. And that means finding a science team member who can tell us what happened to it," Shepard clapped him on the shoulder. "Stay sharp. You can do it."

Kaidan was staring at the most intact of the fallen husks, an upper torso twitching one shoulder in a circular motion. It almost looked like it was trying to keep moving toward them. "These…these were _people_?"

Shepard squinted at the remains as it seemed to wind down. "It must take a few hours for the spikes to turn people into these things."

Richard had turned his mic off, but Shepard could see his helmet moving slightly; clearly he was talking. The focus of his attention directed the suit VI to connect and relay the audio.

"–pointed unto man the days of his probation…that by his natural death he might be raised…in immortality unto...eternal life, even as many would believ–" Shepard toggled the audio back to the team's current settings.

"Now we know what those spikes are for," Kaidan said to no one in particular, "Turning our own dead against us."

Shepard turned to Ash. "Do you…want to go back and cremate that guy? Ulysses?"

She returned his look, seemed to be thinking. "I…no. I don't have any fuel to start it. We'd have to split the team up." She looked suddenly angry. "It used to be beautiful here."

Kaiden seemed equally disturbed, "Eden Prime will never be the same again."

Ash pointed, "Two intact prefab units at the far end of the camp."

"Let's go." Shepard turned and started toward the two units.

***** Glossary *****

EM: Electromagnetic [Signature]

ET3: Technically "TC-5c," a therapeutic post-stroke neurotech developed in the early 2130s by Erizzo, Thompson, Tprrez Terapie, SpA (ETTT), but referred to by its manufacturer's popularized name ("ET3") rather than its product name (in a manner similar to how people will say "I opened Microsoft" rather than "I opened Word.") The name stuck when the profitable but short-lived company was acquired by Amgen, which even went so far as to rename the product to "ExtraTerrestrial Thalmic Tranquility," which more aptly describes its modern application, and aligned with common usage.

FOB: Fresh Off the Boat. New colony arrivals.

LOSI: Line Of Sight Intersuit. A telecom protocol used by the Alliance to allow fireteams to communicate with each other over short distances without having to worry about interception. Primary mode of data exchange is optical, but the fallback radio component is also scrambled.

RPG: Rocket-Propelled Grenade.

SmartPak: an integrated weapons carrier worn as the back panel for compatible standard armor types. Active hardpoint controllers are linked to standard combat VIs so that a soldier has only to reach for the weapon for it to unlock and begin decompaction. Also automatically connects to weapons and allows them to finish compaction when being secured.

SRS: Squad Realtime Status

thrint: name originally given to an alien race in a series of stories by Larry Niven. Because this story's timeline shares our history, these fictional aliens are also known to the SF fans of this event scheme just as Jules Verne or H.G. Wells are known to us.

ThruView: Sirta Foundation's brand name for their proprietary version of transopter technology. See transopter. Integration of ThruView with standard omnitools allows for Virtual Reality Simulations (VRS).

transopter: Scanning technology for "at arm's length" analysis. Combines infrared, Doppler ultrasound and remote specific gravity arrays to construct a 3D model in virtual space that can be superimposed on a user's omnitool ARO.


	5. Chapter 5: Nihlus Kyrick

A/N - There are terms and acronyms in here that may be unfamiliar; each chapter has a glossary at the end so you can flip down to the bottom, find out what it is, and then go back. (I tried it with the full name in parentheses, but it was too distracting to the scene and dialogue flow.)

This chapter is rated MA for death, a firefight, and language.

***** Nihlus Kyrick *****

Shepard stayed at 2x acceleration, set his sensors to maximum, jogged over to the lefthand module. The door and windows were wide open. It looked like a stateroom space for two, open to enjoy what would normally be beautiful weather; a couple of chairs and bunks with a couple of displays each, plus some storage. The airlock, fully collapsed into a niche on the wall opposite the door, looked as if it had never been used.

Kaiden, Ash, and Richard stepped in behind him. Shepard looked around for a working GPC or VI terminal. "Alenko, find me the local network and see if there are any users still online. Williams, do you know any of the scientists here? Any names I can start looking for when we connect?"

"Doctor Warren was in charge of the dig, she's an archaeologist from…uh…Cornell? Cambridge? I forget. The three other researchers…uh…two humans and an alien…I don't know their names."

"Got it; we're connected to the net," Kaidan said, "I'm logged in to their DCE, but I don't see any other active users."

"I suppose we shouldn't be surprised," Shepard glanced out at the rest of the camp, "Do we know how many people were here?"

"Normal complement has been the four original researchers, they bunked in the main building." Ash pointed out the windows at the fallen and smoking structure. "They had just brought in four more full-timers, and the 212 helped them set up these units. They have some local contractors that come out and do some of the administrative stuff. I think they have a local chef, too. Doctor Warren is afcRNA-resistant GFCF, and she likes talking menus. I think that's just because she could pull strings at the university, though."

Shepard walked out as she was talking; Ash and the rest of the team followed. As they approached the second prefab, she pointed, "That door. It's closed. Security lock's engaged." She traded her assault rifle for her shotgun, raised its muzzle to the magnetic lock.

"Wait," Shepard said, "The world doesn't end today. This might be usable later if we don't blow the lock off." As he stepped up to the door, he replaced the geth rifle on his back and raised his left arm to the lock. "Don't destroy what you can still use." He switched to a remote hardware mode, and held his left hand to the side of the controller.

A green diode lit as it connected, and he touched the ENTER key. A circular array appeared on his ARO, and highlighted the four keys that showed any wear. Shepard clicked his way through them until he had discovered the code, and when the indicator switched from red to green, and he tapped it.

The door grumbled open, and something inside rustled.

Shepard put a hand near his face, gestured the command to crack the seal on his helmet, but left his visor down. "Hello? Anyone here?" He peeked his pistol around the corner slowly, seeing what it saw: humans. He pulled the weapon back quickly, stepping out where she could see him.

The red-haired woman slowly put down the makeshift club. "Humans! Thank the Maker."

A hoarse whisper followed from the shadows behind her, "Hurry! Close the door...before they come back!"

"Dr. Warren…you're safe!" Ash looked more than relieved, like she wanted to hug the other woman, but was managing to restrain herself.

The initial relief at seeing Ash was quickly replaced by caution. "Who are you?"

"I'm Commander Shepard of the _Normandy_. This is Lieutenant Alenko, Corporal Jenkins…and it seems you already know Chief Williams."

"Yes, she was in charge of the volunteers from the base who have been helping us."

Shepard turned to Ash. "That CID you mentioned?"

"Yes, sir."

Shepard asked Warren, "Are you injured? How did you get here?"

"The soldiers who were here…if they hadn't been, we'd have been killed, too. We hid here during the attack. They…whoever brought those mechs…must have come here for the beacon."

"Did they get it?"

"No," Doctor Warren looked at Manuel as if with a newfound respect. "Luckily, it wasn't here. Manuel insisted, so it was moved earlier this morning. Manuel and I stayed behind to pack up the camp. These modules are from the colony's General Pool, not the university, so they were to be transported to their next assignment." She looked down, spoke more slowly, "When the attack came, the marines held them off long enough for us to hide. They…the four of them...gave their lives to save us."

"Saved?" The man seemed shocked, "No one is _saved_. The age of humanity is ended. Soon, only ruin and corpses will remain…!"

Shepard ignored him. "What else can you tell me about what happened?

"It all happened so fast. One second, we were gathering up our equipment, the next, we were hiding in the shed while those things swarmed over the camp."

The man kept muttering to himself, "Agents of the destroyers…bringers of darkness…heralds of our destruction…!"

Doctor Warren glanced at him, then continued, "We could hear the battle outside…gunfire, screams…I thought it would never end. Then, everything went quiet. We just sat there, too afraid to move. Until you came along."

"Can you tell me about this thing you discovered? Williams said you were calling it a beacon?"

"It's a type of data module, from a galaxy-wide communications network. Remarkably well preserved. It could be the greatest scientific discovery of our lifetime. Miraculous new technologies…ground-breaking medical advances…who knows what secrets are locked inside?"

Dr. Manuel gibbered, oblivious of anyone else in the structure, "We have unearthed the heart of evil…awakened the beast…_we have breached the darkness!_"

"Manuel, please. This isn't the time."

Shepard studied the man. His ARO switched to Analysis and covered the man with callouts about his left-handedness, the fact that he had taken several falls, blood pressure and pulse, and the fact that he was telling the truth with almost 94% certainty. "I've seen shell shock, and battlefield panic, but your…ah…associate there seems unusually disturbed."

Dr. Warren looked pained. "Manuel has a brilliant mind, but he's always been a bit…unstable. Two of the marines…who were protecting him. They were killed right in front of him."

"Is it madness to see the future?" Manuel had his hands to the sides of his head, "To see the destruction rushing towards us? To understand there is no escape…no _hope?!_ No…I am not _mad_…I'm the only sane one left!"

Dr. Warren shrugged. "I gave him an extra dose of his meds after the attack…just a few minutes ago."

"You gonna be okay here?"

She pointed to her omnitool. "The cargo hovers are on their way; they should be here in an hour. They'll take the intact modules out. I expected to ride out with them."

Shepard looked over his shoulder. "The whole colony's been disrupted; they might be delayed. But I think you'll be safe here if you stay locked up." He glanced out the door. "We've still got time to make up. Williams, get us to that spaceport." Ash nodded, led the way out of the module.

As Richard and Kaidan followed her, Shepard turned to the civilians and said, "We'll stop this. Stay safe."

Manuel continued, "You can't stop it. Nobody can stop it! Night is falling…the darkness of eternity…!"

"Hush, Manuel, go lie down. You'll feel better once the medication kicks in." She turned back to the team, looking almost apologetic. "Good luck, Commander."

"Luck won't save you," Manuel rasped quietly as Shepard exited the module.

_And don't I know it_, Shepard thought.

Ash had turned to the right as she exited, had taken only a few steps to the east before speaking. "We can get to Douglas faster by the maglev. Come on, it's this way." She led the way around the corner and up a slight rise. "Crap, that guy was always kind of weird. But now he's over-the-top nuts."

"With a cherry on top," Kaidan agreed. He stopped suddenly, "Hey, there's some biotic effect here." He waved his omnitool past his weapon, held it up for Shepard to see.

Shepard was just catching up; he looked at Kaidan's holo interface. "What?"

"I'm a biotic, right? Don't want to render my sidearm useless as a side-effect. So I have a sensor that lets me know if there's something detectable…you know, like thermal tolerances that keep parts from moving correctly."

"You can render your own weapon nonfunctional?" Richard seemed incredulous.

"Not only _can_ I…over time, I _will_. This is my eighth pistol in as many years; the Kesslers seem to last the longest for me. Anyway, the effects are measurable, and this is showing signs of having walked through an east-spin biotic field."

Richard walked back to where they were standing. "What does that mean? One of us is biotic? And doesn't know it?"

Kaidan chuckled. "Keep dreaming. No, it just means that we might have just walked past or through a biotic field. It could be one of the workers is a biotic, and did something highly energetic here. Or it could be the bad guys are using biotics, and did so here, too. All it boils down to is that I don't know what caused it...so keep your guard up."

Shepard asked, "What even gave you a clue about this?"

Kaidan shrugged. "I felt it. Here." He put a hand to the back of his neck. "It's not uncommon, but I wanted to make you aware."

Shepard nodded. "Good work, Alenko. Williams, you have any ideas about this? Any biotics in your unit?"

"No, sir. This…uh…isn't a high profile installation."

Richard was prowling the local network for his family, and didn't look up from his omnitool. "Well, it wasn't an hour ago."

Shepard gestured for the map on his ARO and added, "Okay, seal up your suits again; we're still in a fight. Williams, how fast can you get us to the spaceport?"

"We can take the maglev; the station is just ahead. We can be there in thirty minutes, tops."

"All right, Chief, get us there pronto."

Ash snapped into command mode. "Double-time it to the station, let's go!"

**# # #**

Even with two platoons of fully armed geth, Saren had been unable to find where the humans had hidden the beacon. There had been no interrogation, they had simply been slaughtered. As far as he could tell, this was at the direction of Sovereign; Saren considered it a mistake to kill all the humans before the necessary information had been extracted.

He stalked across the terminal's dock, looking for some sign of the beacon.

Although no explanation had been given, Sovereign had impressed upon him the importance of finding the beacon, and Saren only partly trusted the ancient intelligence that inhabited the vast starship. It had guarded the galaxy for millennia against some threat Saren did not yet understand. Although it remained something of a mystery to him, Saren was quite sure it was responsible in some way for the creation of the Citadel. Anything with that sort of capability demanded respect, of course…but no more respect than an antimatter weapon.

His full-time Augmented Reality Appliance (ARA) alerted him to the walking approach of an unknown; the display showed it was not one of the geth. Rather than kill the new arrival, Saren hoped he would be able to get some useful information. He kept his back turned, but his ARA made it as clear as if he'd had eyes in the back of his head.

**Nihlus Kryik**, the ARA informed him.

Saren watched with something like amusement as Nihlus flattened himself against cover.

Nihlus glanced down at his in-suit display, looked at Saren, and again at the display. He leaned out, and then stepped completely out of cover. "Saren!?"

"Nihlus."

Nihlus' reaction was at first confusion, "This isn't your mission, Saren. What are you doing here?"

_So they sent a Spectre_, Saren thought. _The Council must have some sense of the importance of this, but he clearly knows nothing about the location of the beacon._ Saren approached his fellow Spectre, touched his shoulder reassuringly as he stepped behind Nihlus, then armed his pistol with a thought. "The Council thought you could use some help on this one."

With relief at being able to share the burden of a mission gone spectacularly wrong, Nihlus turned and looked almost irresistibly at Sovereign, parked in the distance. "I wasn't expecting to find the geth here. The situation is bad."

"Don't worry. I've got it under control."

A single shot to the upper kavori silenced the turian Spectre. Saren felt a rush of approval. Of course, a Spectre would have no backup.

**THE BEACON IS FOUND**, Sovereign informed him.  
**WE DEPART.  
****DESTROY THIS PLACE.**

Saren unconsciously tilted his head back and clenched a fist. If the beacon was still here, he might be able to find out why Sovereign wanted it. He had hoped to find the beacon first, activate it in the way Sovereign had shown him, and get its message. But now that it had been found, Sovereign only wanted it destroyed.

_But why?_ Saren had wondered, _What don't you want anyone to know?_

He gestured a link to the geth at his command. "Purge this place," he ordered, "Kill anything that moves, then join us at the spaceport in 45 minutes. Units unable to depart will self-destruct."

His geth acknowledged the message.

**# # #**

As they jogged toward the maglev station, Shepard heard a single gunshot in the distance.

His ARO identified the shot as having come from a Carnifex. "That wasn't a geth weapon," he said, "Someone's in trouble." As he reached for his rifle, the stock extended into his hand. "Get to cover; keep 'em at range. Sniper rifles; hilltop ten and two, give me intel. Come on!" He noticed there was no return fire, nor a second shot. _It may already be too late_, he realized.

The air started to shake; in the distance, something black and knifelike rose on a red plume into the sky. It was too big to miss; an enormous ship, easily the size of a dreadnought, had somehow landed on the surface of this one-gee world, and now it was lifting off. It appeared to be using chemical rockets, which seemed absurdly inefficient, but the ululating wail was simply _wrong_.

Kaidan slowed and stopped. "What…is _that_? Off in the distance?"

Ash switched to her rifle's scope view and sighted the thing, "It's a ship! Look at the size of it!"

Shepard's ARO added, **Range: 13 km**

"It's at the spaceport!" Richard sounded panicked.

**Warning**, flashed in front of them, callouts highlighting the geth. Three more spikes retracted with their distinctive squeal and grisly payload. Shepard recoiled at the sight of them; it took almost a full second for him to recover. "Bad guys at twenty meters, get to cover!" He replaced his sniper rifle on the SmartPak, drew his pistol. "Short range; shotguns if you got 'em!"

"Bad Robots at fourty meters," Ash added, "_Stay_ in cover!" Shepard's ARO only showed the approaching husks, but as he extended his pistol out for its view, he saw Ash stand with her shotgun and blow the zombies away with a trio of quick shotgun blasts. Geth snipers coordinated fire on her, but only gave their positions away to Richard and Kaidan; as the first tumbled out of cover from a biotic Throw, Richard put a bullet into a component more critical than he'd guessed; the geth exploded, an arm flying out of the cloud and bouncing to a stop. Richard let out a whoop, "Gotcha!"

A tech relay slipped into Shepard's palm; he dashed across an opening and lobbed it toward the second sniper. A bolt of blue destroyed it as the nearest geth leapt to new cover, but found itself lifted into the air; a second shot from Richard ended it noisily.

"Watch for a third!" Shepard stayed focused on his ARO for any motion.

Seconds ticked slowly by.

"They can wait all day for us." Ash stood again, walked toward the station's unfinished foundation.

"Careful, Chief," Kaidan warned, "Just because you know you're walking into a trap doesn't immunize you."

"You're preachin' to the choir, LT."

Shepard used his pistol's electronic sight as his suit VI switched on every other medium of sensor he had. "Still can't see 'em," he said, "Be careful."

Ash walked slowly forward, looking left and right into cover. "Come on, you bastard," she murmered, "Just poke your little flashlight head out where I can see it…"

More tense seconds as she tried to draw fire or find the last geth – preferably both – before realizing she had walked past where she'd seen motion.

She bent around a final rock and stood up. "I don't get it."

"Do we have any way of detecting them?"

Kaidan, his back against a rock, didn't look up from his omnitool. "Workin' on it…"

"Are you using your sensors, ma'am?" Richard asked, "You might be able to see metals or whatever they're made of…"

"I'm looking all right, but not seeing anything."

**Alenko, K.: It feels like they're just waiting for us.**

"Maybe there were only two of them?" Richard sounded like he didn't even believe it himself.

"Unlikely," Shepard wanted that thought out of their heads until they had data, "Jenkins, how fast can you deploy a microUAV?"

"Armed?"

"No, just for sentry. Camera and sensors."

"Uh…just a minute, sir."

"Launch when ready. Find me that bad guy, or confirm there are no others within a hundred meters."

With his sensors in Combat mode, he could hear the faint buzz of Richard's omnitool as it stopped, and a _cha-klik_ as he snapped a power cell into place.

"Drone aloft," Richard said, flicking his wrist. The drone's camera appeared as a translucent inset on all their AROs; the fisheye view was momentarily dizzying as it climbed to about 20 meters while staying centered on Chief Williams.

"Come out, come out, wherever you are," Richard sang softly.

A geth staggered out from behind a wall to their _left_, Richard sprang up and sighted in on it.

Ash's weapon chattered as she turned, already firing on the motion she saw to the _right_. The geth, with just its rifle and scope peeking over a rock, exploded sideways.

Richard fired, and the first geth, unarmed, collapsed with a second hole in its torso.

Ash was suddenly angry, "That was _bait_, and you fell for it! If you're hunting them and they know it, and you know they know it, you _never_ shoot the first _obvious_ target!"

"Steady, Chief," Shepard said, "This is his first fight."

"Well it'll be his _last_ if he isn't careful!"

"Sorry, ma'am. Sorry, sir." He reached out a hand and caught the drone as it fell toward him. "Hey, look. Another camping module. Looks locked."

The rest of the team turned to where he was pointing. There was indeed another P8 container, and the control pad was glowing red. As they approached, Shepard thought he could see between the slats; there were people inside.

He touched a key on his forearm and switched briefly to PA mode; he rapped on the door with armored knuckles. "Hello? Anyone in there?"

Ash and Richard kicked dirt on the burning shipping container as Kaidan stooped to inspect a small canister nearby.

There was no answer from inside. Shepard brought sensors to bear; his ARO showed three infrared sources. He banged on the door again. "Are you okay in there? We're Alliance, offering aid. Hello?"

The fire had been reduced to smoldering as the other soldiers gathered at the door. Kaidan offered a fresh grenade to Shepard. "Thanks."

Kaidan nodded, turned away quickly.

Shepard raised an arm to the door control, made short work of the lock.

Apparently this was enough to get some response from the people inside; a man's voice said, "Everybody stay calm out there. We're coming out, and we're not armed!"

Three people came out the door; the one woman asked, "Is it safe? Are they gone?"

Shepard held up his hands to reassure them, "You're okay…we took care of them."

The older man glanced nervously around, "Those things were crawling all over the shed. They would have found us for sure. We owe you our lives."

"I still can't believe it," the woman was nearly frantic, "When we saw that ship, I thought it was all over."

Apparently his nerves were making the older man chatty, too; he pointed with one hand, drew a line across the sky where he had seen the enormous black ship. "It showed up right before the attack. I knew it was trouble as soon as we saw it, so we made a break for the sheds."

Shepard nodded. "Tell me everything you remember about the attack."

"Me and the rest of the Day Crew were working the crops when that ship showed up. We just saw it and ran." He hesitated, looked guilty. "I don't know what happened to the rest of the crew."

The other man gestured, "They were by the garage over near the spaceport, right where that ship came down. No way they survived."

The woman was emphatic, almost hysterical, "You don't know that; we survived! If they made it to the garage, they could've had a fighting chance!"

Shepard continued, "Do you know anything about the Prothean beacon they dug up?"

The man shrugged, "We're just farmers. We heard they'd found something out there, but it never really mattered to us. Not until now."

"What else can you tell me about the ship you saw?"

"I was too busy running to get a clear look at it."

"Tell them about the noise, Cole…that awful noise."

Cole looked back at Shepard, "It was emitting some kind of signal as it descended. Sounded like the shriek of the damned, only it was coming from inside your own head." He tapped his forehead with a finger.

Shepard illuminated his omnitool gauntlet, held it up as if to show it. "You could hear it on your audio player?"

"No, it was actually _in my head_, not like listening to music." He held up a bare arm, "I thought there was something wrong, so I took mine off."

"It was exploiting _neurotronics_?" Kaidan took a step back.

"Whatever it was, it felt like it was tearing right through my skull. Almost made it impossible to think."

_Not much useful info to be gained here_, Shepard realized, "Thanks for your help; we have to go."

The younger man muttered, "Hey, Cole, we're just farmers. These guys are soldiers. Maybe we should give them th—"

Cole rounded on him, "_Cheese_ us, Blake, you've gotta learn when to _shut up_."

Shepard waited until the man turned and faced him again; they met his eyes only briefly before the other man looked away. "There anything you'd like to tell me, Mister Cole?"

The older man sighed, "Some guys at the spaceport were running a small smuggling ring. Nothing major. In exchange for a cut of the profits, we let them store packages in our sheds."

Shepard pointed into the P8 shed, "You mean all the stuff in there is contraband?"

"No, no…not like that. It's all ICHUS hardware, but they have a tricked out fabber…some Super Whiz-Bang Whatchamacallit. They turned off the FRM chip or something. They can make some stuff before the licenses hit public air. Yesterday I got a pistol from them." He patted his pocket. "I figured it'd come in handy if those things came back."

"He said he took care of them, Mike," the woman swatted the back of his head, "Give it up!"

Reluctantly, he pulled the weapon from his pocket and held it out between finger and thumb.

Shepard's ARO identified it:

**Devlon Stinger r8  
Alliance Issue Only  
Public Avail Pending**

He took the weapon and passed it to Ash for inspection.

"That's an Eight, all right," she said, "Real good print, too. Prefer the Stiletto, myself."

Jenkins was looking at his own pistol, a Stinger r4. "Can I trade up? We can leave them with a way to defend themselves, and I get an upgrade."

Ash reached out her left hand, took Richard's pistol, handed the older Devlon weapon to the farmer. Focusing on the newer weapon, she clacked the ammoblock into place, snapped off the safety, turned and fired a round into the dirt to her right, refreshed the ammoblock. She regarded the pistol once more before clicking the safety back on and handing it to the Corporal. "Have that serviced with a VI," she said, "Or me, if we get back to base."

"We're risking our lives to save this colony," Shepard said patiently to the man, "You sure there isn't anything else that could help us?"

From another pants pocket, Cole produced an ammoblock. "Hammerhead rounds. State of the art. I'm sure they're worth a fortune."

"They are when you're trying to stop bad guys from killing you," Ash growled, "Who's your contact at the spaceport, Cole?" She wasn't shaking him by his lapels, but only partly because he didn't have them. "What's his name?"

"He's not a _bad guy_," Cole said slowly, "I don't want to get him in trouble. Besides, I'm not a snitch."

Shepard still found it trying to deal with people who didn't have the same information he did, but he had learned that patience got much better results long-term. "He might have something to do with this whole attack, Mister Cole. We need a name. It's important."

"Yeah, okay; you're right. His name's Powell. He works at the local dock…if he's still alive."

"Thanks, Mister Cole," Shepard nodded toward the other two in turn, "Ma'am. Sir. Be safe." Shepard turned quickly to the team, "Come on, we're getting later by the minute, and now I'm thinking those guys may have left with the beacon already."

The Gunnery Chief was a woman of action, and this order suited her just fine. She turned and jogged off, "Yes, sir! Come on team, double-time it!"

"So who was shooting?" Kaidan asked as they jogged towards the unfinished train station, "There must be someone here…"

"If you don't have your shields all powered up, do it now," Shepard said. "Williams, with your shields…well, frankly, you're a tank. You up for point? Can you get us on that train?"

"Yes, sir! Let's get the bastards!" She sounded angry…and unbalanced. She checked the settings on her rifle and raced ahead.

Shepard gestured for messaging. As the window opened, he said, "Kaidan: You still have eyes on her chemistry? Can we even offer any help?"

The two made eye contact. Kaidan nodded, then shook his head; _Yes, I'm still monitoring__,_ and _No, we can't help._ He finished with a thumbs-up; _She'll be okay. _As he turned to look ahead again, Kaidan said, "Nihlus!" and broke into a run. "Man down!"

Shepard turned and followed the Lieutenant's path; a turian lay on the entrance deck, a spatter of blood around his head. He started to run; faster when he realized it was indeed Nihlus.

"Should we call the _Normandy_? Sir?" Richard asked as he ran.

"Let's see how bad he is," Shepard answered, "You've already had a big day. You know what it's like."

Ash had stopped running when she saw. "A turian. You know him?"

"He's a Spectre," Kaidan answered, "He was…part of our mission."

Jenkins sounded like he wasn't quite sure how to feel about it. "I think he thought he was _our_ backup."

Shepard ran up to the body and stopped as his ARO displayed a warning. "I have some first aid for turians in my Library, but it's a couple of months old."

Jenkins pointed, "Can you link into _his _library?"

"He's a Spectre. His VI might get unhappy and aggressive if I tried anything suspicious, but…" He worked his omnitool interface, found a p-net channel. "But he's a dead duck if we just let him lie there." He dropped a medigel packet in front of Kaidan, "Here, get that stuff in his head, I think I've connected to his VI."

Kaidan was kneeling, scanning with his omnitool's transopter. "It looks bad." He snapped up the medigel, ripped the top off, squeezed the contents into the open wound.

"_Bad?_" Ash was looking over his shoulder, pointed at the wound, "That's an _assassination_. Look, the entry goes up into the head through that…"

"Kavori," Shepard, accelerated to 4x, read from his display. "Williams, do you have any medi-gel?"

"Not anymore," she said bitterly.

"We can't let this guy stay dead," Shepard turned to Richard, "Not on my watch, anyway. Jenkins, how much omnigel do you have?"

"Ninety-four, sir."

"Give fifty to Alenko, go back up the hill and gel those bad robots. Gel the husks if you can. Use your knife to cut them up first, and don't get squeamish. Williams, go with him, I want you on High Sentry watch up to one hundred meters DMT. Stay in touch with each other and with me. Get moving."

As the younger man was handing over an interlocked stack of cookie-shaped omnigel units, Ash turned and clapped him on the shoulder, "Alright, come on, kid." She jogged back to the nearest geth wreckage, practically towing Richard along.

"I'm not a kid," Richard squawked, "Hey…go easy. Still healing here."

Shepard toggled his comm, spoke privately to Kaidan. "You have a second fabber that does molecular-resolution stuff, right? Can you make medi-gel with it?"

Kaidan looked startled, then seemed to get over it. "Yes, but it's slow. It'll take maybe eight to twelve minutes to make one medigel pack."

"Get started. When they come back, be on the other side, using your transopter. Nihlus' VI is telling me he'll need four packs, and I only have three left. Which leaves us no room for error in completing this mission without getting shot at…unless you can make some more."

"I'm on it."

"Victor Indigo, sentry mode," Shepard started to sit down where he could work easily on the turian, "Switch back to normal comm. Give me helmet views for Williams and Jenkins. Update link to Nihlus' VI."

The response message from the Spectre's suit was surprisingly fast: **Medical emergency. Assistance required.**

"Nihlus' suit, tell me what to do," Shepard said.

The VI displayed concise instructions, as each step was finished, the next was displayed. Shepard thought the turian's suit might be using his camera under a First Responder protocol, but didn't take the time to check; it was enough that the thing was helping him.

As Shepard pulled his hands away, the suit collar closed an opaque dome over Nihlus' head. Indicator lights switched on, first red, then green.

**Return body to Spectre Office. Well done, Alliance Commander Shepard.**

Kaidan could not see the text messages, but the suit sealing itself was easy to understand. "Well…thanks for caring," he said with a shrug.

Shepard looked up. "Yeah…that's almost exactly what it said. We gotta drag this guy along now?" He shook his head, gestured the message window closed, put two fingers to his ear, "Williams, Jenkins. Talk to me." His VI identified the named parties and toggled back to LOSI before transmitting.

"I gelled two of them and maxed out," Richard answered, "So I gave as much to…uh…Chief Williams as she could take, and I'm working on number three."

Shepard pointed to Kaidan's left legpocket inquisitively. The biotic raised the single, finished medigel pack.

Shepard nodded, gestured for him to get started on a second pack. "All right, we've wrapped Nihlus up, but we'll have to find a way to get him to the _Normandy_. Get back down here."

"On our way, sir," said Ash, "Never saw any sign of hostiles."

"Thanks; good to know."

Shepard gestured again for a private channel to Kaidan, "Can you let that thing run while we're heading for the spaceport?"

"I left it running already. It's slow, but not power-hungry."

"Expert choice," Shepard nodded approvingly.

Ash and Richard came trotting down the hill and across to the platform. "How's Mister Nihlus? He gonna make it, sir?"

Shepard looked at the body and shook his head. "I don't know. The suit VI gave instructions, and when it was done, it sealed itself up. I assume he's in stasis or something." He worked the omnitool controls.

Richard walked around Nihlus, looking closely. "Is that his helmet?"

"It closed over him after we had done all the VI asked," Kaidan shrugged. "It probably wouldn't have bothered with medigel if he was a corpse."

"Then why isn't he awake?"

Shepard nodded at his omnitool. "Seems turians estivate when they're severely wounded. They also have some requirements about waking him back up. I think it's religious. Twelve stages of Death, and apparently he's not all the way there." He lowered his omnitool and sighed. "Crap. Now we gotta drag this guy along and still try to finish—"

Something to their left shifted and crunched on the ground; Ash spun, weapon up. "Halt! Who goes there?"

***** Glossary *****

afcRNA: active fast-coding RNA. Therapeutic fcRNA designed to alter one's personal genome permanently, but to do so fast enough that the autoimmune system doesn't have time to react adversely before the change is complete.

ARA: Augmented Reality Appliance. Implanted form of Augmented Reality system most often used by people with disabilities; more expensive, but uses BMI (Brain-Machine Interface) that requires user training, and sometimes interferes with the autoimmune system.

ARO: Augmented Reality Overlay

BMI: Brain-machine Interface

CID: Colonial Infrastructure Detail

DCE: Distributed Computing Environment

DMT: Doppler Motion Tracker. Remote, relatively close-range motion and mapping system.

FRM: Fabrication Rights Management

GFCF: Glucose Free Casein Free. Lifestyle choice for people who are allergic to casein and glucose.

GPC: General Purpose Computer

ICHUS: International Council on Home User Safety. An Earth-based NGO focused on 3D printer safety, but largely controlled by product-development groups like Matsushita, Foxconn, General Electric, Caterpillar, and others.

neurotronics: neurological electronics, usually with a suite of apps that include telecom, media playback, medical monitoring, navigation, and a BMI for most DCE.

PA: Public Address


	6. Chapter 6: CityKillers

A/N - There are terms and acronyms in here that may be unfamiliar; each chapter has a glossary at the end so you can flip down to the bottom, find out what it is, and then go back. (I tried it with the full name in parentheses, but it was too distracting to the scene and dialogue flow.)

This chapter is rated MA for death, a firefight, and language.

***** CityKillers *****

The stubble-faced man stumbled backwards, hands up defensively, "Wait! Don't—don't shoot! I'm one of you, I'm human!"

Shepard was relieved to see another breathing civilian. "Hey, it's all right. You're alive, and we're glad to see you. What were you doing?"

"I'm sorry, I was hiding…from those creatures. My name's Powell…Powell Carpenter. I saw what happened to that turian. The other one shot him."

"What do you mean? Can you tell me what happened?"

The man was frantic; he was nearly babbling. "The other one got here first. He was waiting when your friend showed up. He…he called him Saren. I think he knew him. Your friend seemed to relax. He let his guard down…and Saren killed him. Shot him right in the back. A…I'm just lucky he didn't see me behind the crates."

"We were told a Prothean beacon was sent to the spaceport. What happened to it?"

Powell stuck a thumb over his shoulder. "Already left...it's on the other platform by now. That Saren guy hopped on the transport as soon as he shot your friend. I knew that beacon was trouble. Everything's gone to hell since we found that thing. They killed everyone…everyone! If I hadn't been back there, I'd be dead, too."

"How come you're the only one who survived?"

"They never had a chance. I…I was already behind the crates when the attack started."

Kaidan squinted, "Wait a minute. You were hiding behind the crates _before_ the attack started?"

Powell recoiled as if he'd just been caught. He seemed to think for a few seconds, then shrug resignedly. "Sometimes I need a little nap to get through my shift. I sneak off behind the crates to catch a few Zs where Paolo can't see me from the tower."

Ash sounded disgusted, "You survived because you're _lazy_?"

Kaidan didn't quite look over his shoulder at the spikes. "If you hadn't snuck off for that nap, you'd probably be dead just like all the others."

The man seemed to deflate. "Yeah…yeah, I guess. I don't really want to think about it."

Shepard nodded once. "Okay, then what else can you tell us about the geth attack?"

"It was quick. One minute that ship was descending, the next, those things were swarming over the platform. Thousands of them. They must have been inside that mother ship. They shot everything that moved. It was a massacre."

"Where are the bodies?" Richard asked, "Can we offer any first aid?"

Powell raised a shaking arm toward the spikes, then turned away quickly.

Ash looked around where they were standing, "But not all of them?"

"I don't know…_I don't know!"_ Powell put his hands to his head, took a step back.

Shepard raised his hands assuringly, "Hey, it's okay. Is there anything else you can tell us about the beacon?"

"They brought it here this morning. We loaded it up on the train and sent it to the spaceport. Hard to believe that was only a few hours ago. Feels like a whole other life."

Shepard paused thoughtfully. "I wonder what prompted that Manuel guy to send it to the spaceport…?"

"What?" Powell seemed confused.

"Sorry…thinking out loud. Tell me about this mothership you saw."

Powell looked up where he had apparently see the ship go by, almost reliving it. "I've never seen anything like it before. It…it was huge, it landed over near the spaceport." He started poking at his own forehead, "The whole place got dark as it came down. It was making this noise, this…this _sound_ that bored right into your brain. That's what woke me up. The attack came a few minutes later."

Kaidan waved a finger thoughtfully at Powell. "You're Cole's contact here on the docks. For the smuggling ring."

"What? No! Ah…I mean…what does it matter now? So I'm a smuggler, who cares? Paolo's dead, everyone else is dead…it doesn't matter now, does it?"

"Anything hidden nearby that we could use against the geth?"

"A shipment of grenades came through last week…and nobody seems to notice a few pieces missing...if you cut them off at the dividers."

"That's hard to believe," Kaiden muttered.

Ash took a couple of steps toward the man, "You greedy son of a bitch, we're out here risking our lives and you—"

Shepard turned his head quickly, "Chief!" He looked at Powell again, realized he had become the Good Cop. "No, I mean something big, like a Grizzly or an APC of some kind. We have to get to the spaceport. Quickly."

The colonist looked at Shepard as if he'd asked for a winning lottery ticket. "We don't get that stuff at this end. That all drops in at the Alliance camp. The piddly stuff they send out here…I never thought you'd actually need _grenades_. Who'd want to attack Eden Prime? We're just a bunch of farmers; how was I supposed to know?"

Shepard noted the time on his ARO mission clock. "We still need to get to that beacon before it's too late."

Powell waved vaguely to his right. "Take the cargo train, it goes straight there, and that's where the other turian went anyway." He turned away, "I can't stay here. I have to go home. I…need to get away from all this."

Ash held up a hand, "Wait…Commander, do we want to have him take this turian back to Endo Memorial? It's the nearest major hospital short of going all the way to Constant. Even if they can't fix him there, they'll be able to hold him until the turians can pick him up."

Shepard turned, "Can you do that, Powell? Can you take our friend to Endo Memorial?" Shepard's ARO read the man's face, indicated the subtle cues he was giving; he might be swayed with some encouragement. "It'll be a problem if we have to take him with us, but I don't want to lose a team member to do it."

"I…I can't do that. It's far. And dangerous!"

"It's sure to be safe at the hospital. How far out of your way is it?"

Shepard's VI added a map overlay of the colony with their position and the hospital, and added the location of Powell's home based on a 411 query. It was on the same transit line, about two kilometers beyond where he would have changed over to another route.

"No…no, I can't. I just can't!"

Ash pulled her pistol off its holster by its body. "Maybe I can convince…"

"Let me do it, sir," Richard interrupted, "I know this colony. I know where Endo Memorial is, and I know alternate routes to get there. I'll drop Mister Nihlus off and meet you at the spaceport to pick up the beacon."

As Shepard's ARO map was updated with locations of firefights, he saw there were no known hazards on the path Richard would need to take. He frowned. "I don't like sending you off alone. But it looks like, with the capital ship gone, the rest of the invasion force is withdrawing to the spaceport again. I hope they didn't get the beacon on that ship and leave."

"They couldn't have," Ash waved an elbow towards Powell as she holstered her pistol, "He says they just left for the spaceport. They must have another ship. The big black one landed the invasion force and then bugged out."

"Too much time pressure here," Shepard pointed at Richard. "All right Jenkins, this is your home, and you know it better than I do. I want you to medevac Nihlus to Endo and meet us at the spaceport. Stay in touch. Text me updates at mode changes and remember: the best defense is to _not_ be where your enemy is shooting. Be safe." He extended a hand.

The young Corporal's confident smile ratcheted up another notch. "You bet, sir." He shook the Commander's hand enthusiastically, turned back to where Nihlus lay. "The hospital has its own station right on the line, so I'll meet you at the spaceport as soon as I can." He lifted the turian in a fireman's carry.

Shepard turned back to Powell, but the man had run off. _No battle plan has ever survived contact with the enemy_, Shepard thought. "All right, then. Williams, is the train going to be a problem?"

"Don't expect so, sir. It's a VI network with six nodes, thirty carts." She focused on the station depot. "Looks like they're a little heavy today with all the stuff they sent out to extract the beacon safely. The system might attach a few rider carts to—"

"Hostiles at the station!" Kaidan bolted to the left, "Get to cover!"

"Drones and troops!" Ash's pistol was instantly in hand; she snapped off three rounds before she got to cover. "Switch to charged rounds if you can!"

Richard jumped right, throwing Nihlus behind a crate before pulling his assault rifle off his SmartPak.

The geth android had swept a line of fire across the team and managed to hit only Shepard as he dove and rolled left.

While his shields began to recharge, Shepard gestured for full 6x acceleration, displayed an overhead view of the area, coordinating data from the other members of the fire team.

**Enemy drone down** showed on Shepard's ARO; Kaidan had shorted out the drone nearest him as Richard fired over the crate at the other.

"That geth mech is controlling the drones," Ash said, "Anybody got a clear shot?"

The remaining drone climbed high, firing a heavy incendiary down at Nihlus and Richard as it headed behind them.

"Rich!" Kaidan shouted.

"Uhh-!" was the only noise that came from the Corporal as the crates erupted in splinters and flames. A figure moved behind them, "Nihlus!"

Shepard's ARO showed biometrics: Jenkins was still alive and moving. "Williams, keep that geth pinned down!" He gestured for a tech relay, grabbed a finished one off his belt with his left hand, brought up his pistol in his right. Apparently Kaidan exploiting the shields of the first to short it out had given the second one a chance to reconfigure; its shields powered down as armor was extruded over critical systems. With his VI-assisted targeting showing him where the fabber heads were, he fired three precise shots, shooting the fabber off one side, and flung the relay toward it.

The now-unbalanced drone dropped and scooted left, fired off another incendiary at him as he rolled out of cover to a half wall, and activated the relay. The drone exploded in sparks and started to fall from the sky, aiming itself at Shepard.

"They're on the train!" Kaidan continued, "At least four more, and one of 'em is _huge_!"

Shepard leapt away from the wall as the orange-flaming wreckage crashed into it. Shrapnel pelted him, chipping and burning where it hit; as he was swatting the flames out on his right leg, gunfire erupted behind him.

His ARO window showed him what his team was seeing: Kaidan had lifted the geth from cover on the left and Ash had shotgunned it from the right. That left the ones that had commandeered the train.

"Jenkins, get me another recon drone. I need to see that train."

Kaidan switched his pistol to **Scope View** and aimed it over the balcony edge at the train. "They're just flattops, not covered cars," he said, "Can you see my scope view?"

Richard's omnitool whirred softly as it pushed out parts; he laid each aside as it was finished and started snapping them together with his right hand. "Chief, do you have some cells I can put in this thing?"

A digital whistle sounded from the platform. "_Attention. Train is now departing for EDPR spaceport_," announced a VI, "_Please stand clear of the gap_."

"They're taking the whole train," Ash yelled, "We'll never get another one back here. Get to the train as fast as you can!" She ran to the edge of the balcony, vaulted over it and out of sight.

"Williams, wait!" Shepard's call was too late; he ran back to where Richard was bent over the half-assembled drone. "Jenkins, forget the drone; get Nihlus down the ramp, footdrag, on the double!" He ran back to the balcony as the station VI started to complain about an obstruction preventing the train from leaving. "Alenko, can you see Williams?"

"She's holding the train by bridging the gap with her foot," Kaidan answered, "I can see the geth, and they're gonna be all over her!"

Shepard pulled his sniper rifle off his back. "Stop them! Protect her!" As Shepard's rifle was configuring itself, Kaidan popped up out of cover long enough to hurl a biotic bolt at the lead geth; it was thrown backwards into another; both crashed to the floor. Ash had her Banshee perched on the top of a half wall, and was looking through the sight with her ARO. She saw the sniper pop up and fire once; she squeezed the trigger, but the geth was already gone.

Blood spattered messily across one side of Ash's faceplate from the right as Kaidan rolled into cover next to her. "Ah! Ow, damn."

She glanced at him; Kaidan was clutching his right shoulder. She fired again, but couldn't move to help him, "How bad?"

"I'm okay, I'm okay," he said, "Suit's got it under control." He stayed in cover, focused on his ARO. "Just give me a minute."

"Get down here, this train's really wanting to leave," Ash barked at the other two, "And the robots have probably figured out why it isn't!"

Shepard was at the bottom of the ramp, rifle up and watching the geth closest to Ash. "Jenkins, get stay in cover!" The two geth had already moved to opposite sides of the cart; the one nearest him leaned out, sighting down the side of the train at Ash. At 6x, it was easy to see the move before it was complete, so he stopped with both feet planted, sighted and fired.

In slow motion, he watched the shot appear to ricochet off the side wall in front of the geth, spraying shrapnel and acquiring a more lethal angle of attack. Apparently the geth were not armored underneath their curved heads; the camera appendage shattered, the geth thrashed briefly. The other geth stayed in cover as two more approached from the far end of the train.

"The train's moving!"

"They must be overriding it," Jenkins was struggling his way down the ramp with Nihlus in tow, "I'm comin' across as soon as I'm down there, cover me!"

The one oversized geth with black-and-yellow coloring was enormous; two pillar-like antennae were extended up from its back, an oversized rifle in its arms. It lumbered down the length of the train as if it didn't even care whether it was shot.

Shepard checked the battlefield with his left eye before scoping the camera of the big geth with his right; as the Destroyer geth brought its weapon to bear, Shepard quickly snapped off the shot without aiming carefully, and leapt towards the train for cover. His rifle protested an overheat warning.

Richard was adrenaline-pumped. "I'm at the base of the ramp! I need cover!"

The two smaller geth that had been behind the half-walls took up flanking positions, using the larger Destroyer unit as cover.

"Williams, you got a grenade launcher?" Kaidan spoke through clenched teeth.

She traded her rifle to her left hand and set it down as she drew the shotgun off her rear belt. "Grenade launcher ready," she pumped a grenade into firing position.

"Coordinate fire on the big one!" Kaidan rose, left hand extended, palm up, right hand in a fist; the geth seemed to tumble forward but did not fall. Engulfed in a purplish glow, the thing somersaulted through the air towards them in slow-motion.

Ash rose from cover, shotgun to shoulder. There was a _choonk_ as a line of smoke followed the thumb-sized explosive from weapon to target; she had fired it into an unarmored space where the geth's neck met its shoulder.

Orange light burst from the gaps in its armor as the μRPG detonated. Ash quickly pumped and fired another as Kaidan's other hand came up and he took a step forward, opening and extending his right hand toward the geth. The burning form exploded again and seemed to reverse direction, crushing the other two geth as it fell to the train floor.

Kaidan's move had required both hands, but his pistol was out immediately, "Cover fire!"

"Here I go!" Richard started across the platform backwards, dragging Nihlus.

Shepard's rifle had cooled; he sighted over the top of a service box at the back of the train, looking for the geth at the front.

Four geth sprang up, coordinating fire on Richard. Shepard fired on the one to the right, hoping to obscure the view of the others with resulting smoke, but the android simply fell backwards. Kaidan, carefully aiming his shots, fired twice, but put one round each straight into the camera eyes of two more before another grenade from Ash arced to the front of the train and detonated, hurling geth and debris into the air. The train crunched to a halt, and suddenly everything was silent.

Tiny dinks and plinks announced fragments landing. Smoke billowed from geth, train, and station, drifting east.

"I think we're good, Commander," Kaidan noted.

"'Good?'" Ash rose from cover, "Hah! We rock! Good work, team!" As she turned, she made eye contact with Shepard. "Sorry, sir. Hope I'm not stealing your thunder."

"No, it's all right, Chief. The mission comes before ego. Anybody else hurt?" Shepard turned, jogged toward the back of the train. "Jenkins, you okay?"

"Shields were almost useless," came the radioed reply. He sounded hurt.

"Are you okay?"

"I think so. Am I bleeding?"

"Let me have a look. Alenko, Williams, get this train underway; get us to that spaceport."

Alenko turned and started off, "You got it."

Williams saluted Shepard's back, "Yessir."

Shepard started toward the back again, "All right, Jenkins…" As Richard came into view, his armor was smoking, but appeared to have done its job. "No blood, but you're gonna be sore and bruised tomorrow."

Richard emitted a whimper of a sigh and shook his head. "Great."

Shepard suppressed a laugh, made a fist and bopped the Corporal on the shoulder. "Hey, be proud. It's your first battle damage. Means I owe you a drink when we get back. And it beats the daylights out of being dead. Now you know why you have a PMA. Fire that thing up...use it. You can even configure it to start automatically."

"At least you're not having to drag _me_ around." Richard turned and looked at Nihlus. "So what do we have to do with _this_ guy?"

"You're going to drag him up to the front of the train while I find out why we're not moving yet." As if in response, the train lurched _backward_.

"Drag the Spectre to the front of the train, yes sir," Richard said, struggling to his feet. "So we're doing the work and he's sleeping through it all." He shook his head. "If that's what it takes, I wanna be a Spectre, too."

_Well, the spirit is willing, even if the flesh is well-pummelled_, Shepard thought. "Attaboy. Sing out if you need a hand." He turned to the front of the train, but continued to speak to the Corporal. "Also, save any reasonably intact geth tech that you can." Shepard touched his own back with his left hand, "And fab a new set of left back panels; you took some damage _here_. Keep an eye out for more geth."

"Yes, sir." Shepard could see the younger man speak to his suit VI, ordering it into sentry mode. He turned and walked to the front of the train, trading his sniper rifle for his pistol, and also setting his own suit to monitor for approaches.

Ash spoke over the 'comm, "Oh, that's just great. Sir, this might take a few minutes."

"What's the matter?" He began to jog to the front of the train, noting the articulated cars were segmented into ten-meter lengths that looked like they could be separated.

"The grenade…uh…broke the train. The Lieutenant and I are…working on it."

"Need any help?"

"Rrgghh…not yet, sir."

As he approached, he could see Kaidan using his biotics to lift the broken maglev cart off the track, but Ash was pushing it from the tracks with good old-fashioned muscle power. Once it was beyond her ability to push against anything, she backed away and Kaidan let it crash to the ground. Both were breathing heavily.

Shepard nodded, patted the man's shoulder. "Nice work, Lieutenant. Fast, too. Get on the train and you can take five. Williams, how do we make this thing go?"

"Controls are on the lead cart…which can be any of them. If we're all aboard, just tell the VI to take us to the spaceport."

"If the cars can be driven independently, should we send a spare with Jenkins?"

"Good idea, sir." She looked quickly over her shoulder along the tracks as Shepard climbed a short service ladder to the deck level. "We should get going, though."

"Don't I know it." He waved his hand over the control board, illuminating the hologram. As Ash clambered up the ladder, Shepard nodded at the controls. "Well, at least it's self-explanatory. Jenkins?"

"Sir?"

"How you doing? Williams recommended we split the train and send you to the hospital. You know how to drive these things?"

"Sure…everybody does." Shepard's ARO showed and labelled a **Rear-view Mirror **overlay of the Corporal approaching from behind, dragging Nihlus. "But we should probably take a few cars each."

"All right then; get going." Shepard turned and started aft. "Alenko, Williams, with me. Jenkins, take the lead three cars for backup, and stay in touch. Let me know when you're on your way back to the spaceport."

"Yes, sir." Jenkins touched his PA control, and then the VI key on the panel. "Three cars to Endo Memorial."

"_Three cars to Endo Memorial_," said the train VI. There was a series of relay-like clicks from behind them. Lights on the walkway that ran continuously along the carts turned green on the three front carts, red flashed at the gap further back. "_Ready for departure_."

Shepard was already running back to the unlit car.

The digital whistle sounded again. "_Attention. 3-cart train north is now departing for Endo Memorial Hospital_," announced a VI, "_Please stand clear of the gap and the break_."

Richard tapped a key marked Emergency Departure.

An understated alarm sounded from the platform, and the Platform VI added, "_Warning: Departure expedited. Please stand clear_." As a new set of controls rose into place from under a panel at his feet, Shepard turned to see Kaidan and Ash standing behind him. The three lead carts slid forward about half a meter and then accelerated away from the station.

Shepard put his hand through the control space, activating the holographic interface, spun the Destination selector to **Douglas Interplanetary Spaceport**, and hit **Emergency Departure**.

**# # #**

Even with Sovereign gone, Saren could feel himself becoming anxious to leave. He bared his teeth, but with only cybernetics to move his jaw, there was no way for anyone else – not even the geth – to see that he had. He noticed in passing that this was a primitive response. _I should be above such things._

_Sovereign left without picking up the rest of the geth. I will not have room for them._

He shook his head. _I can get more geth_, he thought. _I must leave before I'm discovered._

He turned to the nearest geth, though his command would be seen by all of them. "There are four warheads aboard the _Invicta_," he pointed to his ship, "Disperse them, ten minute delay, and set the charges," he growled, "Destroy the entire colony. Leave no evidence that we were here."

The geth answered with electronic affirmatives, turned and walked off the loading platform toward the waiting pocket starship.

Saren walked east, looking across what was left of the spaceport. A lone human appeared at the top of the station access; the geth relayed the image to his ARO.

In one fluid motion, Saren turned, drew his sidearm, and fired one bullet into the forehead of the bewildered alien. Quivering, it stumbled back two steps, and collapsed.

As pairs of geth stepped out of his tiny ship, carrying the two-stage fusion weapons, Saren realized the geth would be useful for the last minutes of their existence, and nodded to himself, understanding why Sovereign had left them. He contracted what was left of his scarred fringe, and issued another order, "Defend the charges against the humans."

_No time left_, he thought. _If I am to get anything from this beacon, I must do it now and let it be destroyed. Sovereign cannot know, but neither will anyone else._

Sovereign had shown him much of what was known about the Protheans' technologies; their ability – even propensity – to detect chemistry in parts-per-trillion and extrapolate biology. Had things gone differently, they might have developed a highly compassionate culture. Neither outcome could have saved them.

_But I know how to use this device._

**_# # #_**

Buried after only a few centuries of use by the very people who had fashioned it, the beacon had lain inert for millennia.

For the days following its excavation, it had been gathering power through its photocollector. Automation inspected the various systems, repairing what it could, restoring basic functions. It ran self-checks, polled its long-dead network, found no other nodes. Many messages remained in its memory, but only one invoked all protocols of urgency.

When it detected a being stepping into its messaging zone, it emitted its protecting field, levitated the recipient, replayed its message.

It was the last time it would do so without failing.

**** Glossary ****

ACI: Alliance Colonial Installation

ARO: Augmented Reality Overlay

PMA: Pain Management Application (app)

μRPG (or uRPG): micro Rocket-Propelled Grenade


	7. Chapter 7: Beacon

A/N - There are terms and acronyms in here that may be unfamiliar; each chapter has a glossary at the end so you can flip down to the bottom, find out what it is, and then go back. (I tried it with the full name in parentheses, but it was too distracting to the scene and dialogue flow.)

This chapter is rated MA for death, firefight, and language.

***** Beacon *****

Shepard noticed the train was slowing, and looked over his shoulder. "We must be almost there," he said, "If we're lucky, they left before the beacon got to the station." He climbed to his feet, "Let's get to it."

Kaidan was looking at his omnitool, "Commander, I've got weapons signatures; nukes…_antimatter nukes_!"

Shepard touched two fingers to Kaidan's omnitool, pulled the data Kaidan was seeing to his own. "Damn. No wonder that thing was in a hurry to get away. Wait…they're moving."

Ash, sniper scope raised to her eye, barked, "Geth! And they're moving heavy stuff…bet they're the bombs!" She fired, trusting her VI-assisted scope to correct for motion.

Shepard knew that two-stage nukes were highly stable, but it still seemed reckless...at first.

Dropping behind one of the train's service pillars, he gestured for 6x Firefight acceleration. As the world seemed to slow down around him, he thought, _If we stop them from moving the bombs, we don't have to go as far to disarm them._

He drew his own rifle, double-checking the signatures that Kaidan had detected against his own sensor data. The VI agreed, **Two-stage antimatter-fusion warheads, 310Mt estimated yield.**

As the weapon fitted onto his shoulder and the scope rolled its range, spectrometer, and IFF data into place, he watched through crosshairs: The first geth that Ash had fired upon stumbled, dropping its end of the load as it collapsed. The geth at the other end continued to pull, dragging the cylindrical device along, but struggling visibly.

She turned slightly to the left, zeroed in on the second geth, but an explosion threw her backward, skidding to a stop several meters back.

"Williams!"

Her neurotronics attenuated the white-hot pain as Shepard pulled her into cover. "Hold on, hold on," he said quickly, "You're hurt." He struggled to fit both of them behind the train's seating pillars.

"I'm okay," Ash objected. "Geth…you have to stop the geth!"

Shepard watched the intelligent armor repairing itself, slowly turning the blackened finish gray and then back to white. "Can't do it without you."

"Need a little help here," Kaidan said from cover. "Looks like about thirty of these guys; we need to stop them while they're moving the bombs, or before any more show up!"

Ash waved Shepard off, "I'm fine, get over—"

"I'm printing your Plate Two," Shepard cut her off, "Soon as I'm done, I'm gone. You print the Panel Three replacement." Holding his left arm slightly away from his body as the omnitool whirred, Shepard watched his ARO for a few seconds, suddenly turned and fired a single shot over the top of the pillar. He raised his voice slightly, "They're moving away," he said to Kaidan.

"I know!" He fired on the lead of a pair crossing the overhead walkway, "They're coming across the bridge! Get yer butt up here and help me stop them!"

Ash finally realized she should be printing a replacement armor plate. "Lieutenant, are they on the overpass?"

"They're walking the nukes across it!" He turned and sighted another geth, running up the ramp on the left.

"Blow it with an RPG!"

"Are you crazy? It's a _citykiller_!" Coordinated fire from the balcony threw him to the ground and destroyed his shields.

Shepard studied his tactical overlay and silently cursed the omnitool for not printing faster. "She's right, they're _two-stage_ weapons," he agreed, "Until the fission detonator fires, they're inert; blow the right side of that bridge!"

Ash snapped armor panel into place, and picked up her Banshee, frowning. _If not, we'll never know it._ Without waiting for her shields to restart, she switched back to her shotgun and rolled to the left side of the train. Leaning briefly out of cover, she sighted on the bridge and launched a pair of RPGs. Fireballs devastated the ramp, and the walkway seemed to tilt in slow motion down to the platform.

The lone geth, dragging its nuclear payload, scrambled for footing. It managed to pull the bomb along until the collapsing bridge hit the platform and bent at its middle; the cylindrical bomb seemed to leap into the air, crush the legs and lower torso of the geth, and bounce across the platform as the bridge crashed to the track.

"Hah!" Kaidan cheered, "We're not dead!"

With Ash's armor repaired, Shepard saw the first bomb had rolled to a stop just ahead of the train. "I'll handle this bomb, but I need cover! Get 'em on that balcony on left!" He pulled his pistol off its legholster and sprinted to the weapon, diving into cover behind it. It took three more shots from Shepard before the partially-crushed geth stopped thrashing.

Ash watched her ARO, trying to lock on to where the geth were positioned. "You can defuse a nuke?"

"Cover! Give him cover!" Kaidan ran across to the ramp, tech relay in hand, and dove behind the wall.

Huddled behind the bomb, Shepard waved his omnitool along its length. The device's outboard accelerators formed an exosleleton that surrounded the weapon itself; as Shepard's VI processed and analyzed the scan data, he studied its exterior controls. _This is a mostly turian design, _he noticed, _Why would the geth have it?_

His omnitool displayed its preliminary findings on his ARO,

**Centaur-4 derivative with helical fission-pulse cobalt antimatter accelerators  
****553g helium fusion warhead (1.8K cryo)  
****Trigger design not in library  
****Performing deep analysis…**

Shepard waved his omnitool vertically, perpendicular to his first pass as the weapon rocked toward him under geth fire. Blue bolts flashed overhead, throwing shrapnel off the far wall.

"I need cover fire! Get them to stop shooting this bomb!"

**Jenkins, R.: Sir, I've arrived at hospital station, the robots were here, but they're leaving.**

Shepard touched his left thumb to his middle fingertip for a text message, "Jenkins, get back here now, we've got robots with fusion bombs!" He ran his right thumb from his little finger's tip to the second joint: **4x acceleration**.

Kaidan had reached the top of the ramp, now with two relays in hand as a third signaled readiness. He said, "Williams, I need you to draw their fire long enough for me to spike them!"

"Shield is recharged, I'm ready when you are!"

Kaidan armed all three relays and studied his ARO, making sure he knew where the geth were. "Go!"

Ash stood shotgun to shoulder and launched her last three RPGs, one at each of the clusters of geth on the balcony to her left. Blue bolts of geth assault rifle fire focused on her as she dropped back into cover. Explosions threw debris and smoke into the air along the balcony, but the geth fired through it toward Ash.

Kaidan sprang to his feet, hurled the three tech grenades across the platform toward the same three places, gestured to activate them. High-voltage electrical arcs were audible but obscured by the billowing clouds of black smoke.

Shepard's VI had gathered enough data about the trigger to direct him:

**Remove service panel next to keypad  
****Cut orange wire with lateral blue stripes**

The panel had no handle, and the screws appeared to be welded into place.

"This is gonna take some time," he called. He pulled a multitool off his belt, snapped open a flat blade screwdriver, jammed it under the open edge of the panel and twisted, trying to create a larger opening.

Geth at the farthest end of the E-17 balcony had made it to a smaller service catwalk and were starting across. Kaidan formed a biotic lift field under a massive crate slowly until he could push it from behind, staying in the cover that it offered as he moved. He put his back to it and shoved, letting it retain about 90 kilos of mass.

"They're too far away," Ash called, "Lieutenant, get to cover! They're crossing at the next bridge!"

"I see 'em, and I'm pushing my cover ahead of me. Can you get up the ramp?" Suddenly the crate became harder to push as the geth directed their fire at it. Kaidan increased the amount of Biotic Lift he was applying, and kept pushing his cover ahead of him.

Ash traded her shotgun for the sniper rifle, leaned out of cover just far enough to sight down the lead geth. Its head exploded, but it continued across the bridge; the one unit may have been blinded, but it used data from the others behind it to keep moving across steadily.

"Son of a _bitch_," she hissed. A second shot through its leg, and the robot collapsed, tumbled under the catwalk's rail and down to the tracks. Ash turned slightly left and aimed at the hips of the next geth, slowing down her awareness to perfect her aim. The robot faltered, grabbed at the rail, threw itself down to the tracks.

Ash switched her ARO from weapon-sight to tactical and back, adjusted her aim and put a round through the next one.

And the next one.

And the next one. Pausing to let the rifle cool, setting up her next shot, she glanced down at the tracks. The damaged geth were pulling themselves hand-over-hand toward her. "Damn these things! Lieutenant, they're coming across the bridge too fast, I can't stop them!"

Shepard's ARO displayed a message from the bomb: **TRIGGER HALTED, NETWORK RESTART?**

He raised his omnitool, rotated the palm holograph control to **Destructive Override**, and closed his left hand into a fist.

He felt a distant, stabbing pain in his left hand as a blue-white arc connected his gauntlet controller with the weapon trigger. Sparks jumped off the oversized mechanical switches, and the bomb controls went dark.

**Trigger Disabled.**

"I got _one_!" He glanced at his tactical display to see where the geth were.

Ash had traded the Harpoon for her trusty Banshee, firing short bursts at the approaching geth, but the bridge was full of them. "I'm out of grenades! Lieutenant, they're almost across the bridge! Get out of there!"

"They're arming the bombs!" Kaidan executed a Throw at the geth leading the way across the second bridge, hurling it into the ones behind it. "We've got to get over there!" The geth were dishearteningly quick at recovering from the biotic traffic jam.

Pulling the geth rifle off his SmartPak, Shepard made his way up the ramp to the train's right, accelerated up to 6x. "Alenko, I'm coming up behind you." He popped out of cover long enough to see the geth on the bridge, running toward Kaidan. Plucking a tech relay off his belt, he threw it toward the geth on the bridge, activating it immediately. Blue-white lightning connected the androids, briefly freezing them in place; Shepard started firing, timing his shots and aim to hit each robot with three or four bolts from the geth weapon.

Geth on the balcony returned fire, but he was able to keep up his barrage until he noticed his shields were getting low; he dropped back into cover. Crawling as fast as he could, he came up behind the crate where Kaidan had stopped. "You okay?"

"There's still more of 'em on the balcony!"

Shepard adjusted his acceleration back down to 2x, and studied his map overlay. "Looks like they're defending the bombs individually."

Kaidan reached up over the crate with his pistol and switched to the view through its sight. "They should be grenading Williams," he said, "Or setting off those bombs now that the troop ship is gone. They must not have expected armed resistance, and they're only packing small ranged arms, not ordnance."

"That thing was awfully big for a troop carrier; I think we don't have the whole story. But yeah, it was only luck we were here. Too bad Nihlus is out of action, or we might be able to use whatever he brought to tip the scales in our favor." Shepard winced in regret. "Damn. I should have asked his VI for access."

He brought two fingers to his ear, switching the comm out of LOSI mode, "Williams, can you get up here?"

"On my way," she answered.

Occasional fire from the balcony kept her careful to stay in cover.

Shepard studied his overhead display, "How many of those things are left?"

"We're gonna be really exposed if you want to get across that bridge," Kaidan said.

"Even with Williams on point, they'll be oblique to us," Shepard agreed. He put his fingers to his right ear again, "_Normandy_, this is Team Two. Team one is down. Repeat: Team One is down. Enemy is deploying nukes, we need support; ground, air, or both."

"Team One, _Normandy_. Copy that. We're currently under fire from heavy enemy surface-to-air. Defending civilians under attack by ground forces."

"_Normandy_, enemy has staged a gigaton of two-stage nukes! If we can't stop them, everything within fifty kliks gets flash-boiled!"

"Copy that, Two; will update the Captain and advise."

Shepard cursed silently and switched back to LOSI. "Dammit, _Normandy_'s tied up defending civvies. Looks like we're on our own." He checked his map overlay. "Victor Indigo, I need a monitor on those three bombs; if they're configuring for ignition, I need to know about it!"

The VI flashed a confirmation on his ARO.

"Looks like we've got about a dozen bad guys left on the balcony," Kaiden said, "And they've grouped themselves around each of the bombs."

Hunched over, Ash ran to join them from the top of the ramp, diving headfirst and skidding to a stop.

"Williams, you got any ordnance left?"

She shook her head. "No, sir. I'm dry. Small arms only."

"I've got to get over there to disarm those bombs. Trade me your shield generator." He started to reach for the releases on his torso armor.

She was suddenly angry. "We'll shield you across the bridge; _I'm not letting them split us up again!_" Shepard's mental overclocking allowed him to realize they were newcomers to this fight; she had been fighting - and losing people - to them since the invasion started. Ash pointed across the bridge, "If we can get to the balcony over there, they'll have to shoot around each other to get us. We've got to get there before _they_ blow the bridge!"

Still running at a cognitive 2x, Shepard had time to consider the plan, and agreed. "Sierra Hotel, Williams. Alenko, you're on point, but Williams, I want you to stay between us and the enemy. We ready?"

"Born ready," Alenko shifted his position so he could leave cover at a run. "Williams, you set the pace for Shepard; here we go!" With pistol in one hand, he gestured his barrier into place and leapt from cover, charging across the bridge.

Shepard elbowed Williams, "Go!"

As they ran, Shepard glanced left at the balcony; as if coordinated, all three groups rose to fire on them. It wasn't enough to overwhelm Williams' shields, but he could see her struggling not to be shoved into his path by the kinetic force.

As he ran, Kaidan tossed two tech relays toward the geth; both popped and in midflight. Only Kaidan knew they were dummies; not only did they print faster, he was saving the expensive materials for when he didn't expect to lose them in an attempt to draw fire. He caught the edge of an angled beam to stop himself in cover, checked his weapon quickly and fired around the platform side of the beam.

"Nice shot!" Ash said as she approached the end of the bridge. "Wait…someone's lifting off from the spaceport. It looks alien!"

Shepard looked north and saw a small vehicle lifting away. As he focused on it, his VI switched to Analysis:

**Batarian pocket cruiser, BSA-12 Musky.  
****Heavily modified for long-haul trips, FTL drive.  
****No transponder.  
****No registration.  
****No IFF.**

_And not even running lights_, Shepard realized. He unconsciously slowed his run just a bit as he thought about who could be piloting that ship, and whether they'd taken the beacon, and if this meant he had just failed his Spectre nomination—

With a shriek of metal, the bridge twisted and sheared away from where it joined the stairs from below; Ash, just slightly ahead, leapt to the balcony, but Shepard was too far to make it; he fell to the broken end of the bridge, his arms flailing against the stub of a cantilevered landing. With nothing to grip, he bounced off the edge and started to fall to the ground, 15 meters below.

His VI detected the fall as soon as it started, and activated his dropsuit. Slowing his fall and correcting his attitude, it gave him just enough time to steer over and catch the single elevated rail. He landed with a painful grunt.

Kaidan had only seen that Shepard was on the bridge when it collapsed. "Shepard! Are you okay?"

"I'm okay, I'm all right." He struggled to get a better grip, "Saved by the dropsuit." As the geth noticed he was down, he found himself drawing fire, shields depleting quickly. He threw a leg over the train rail, lifted himself far enough to grab the handrail on his left. "Keep the geth busy!" Pulling himself onto the service platform, his shields collapsed just as he rolled behind the cover of the stairs.

As he looked down the track, he saw an approaching train with a single figure on it. "Jenkins? Jenkins, get down! We're under fire!"

The standing man dropped behind the service pillar. Shepard's "radio ears" crackled, "Thanks! Switching to sniper rifle!"

Kaidan pulled a tech relay off his belt, rolled it along the balcony's inner wall, activated it. The relay shorted itself out spectacularly…and then everything was suddenly quiet. He peeked his pistol around the side of the beam. "Did we get them?" He checked his ARO.

"That's it," Ash gloated, "Bag 'em and tag 'em."

Richard's train slowed and stopped alongside Shepard. He lifted his rifle from atop the pillar and stepped off. "Are you okay, sir?"

"Yeah. Just waiting for my shields to restart. Sounds like we got them." He raised his voice just slightly, "Okay, no mistakes up there. Alenko, Williams, you sure we got no more geth?"

A pistol fired. And again. And again. "_Not_…anymore," Ash said through her teeth.

Shepard frowned at himself, gestured to the Corporal as he climbed to his feet. "Come on. Let's go see how badly this has gone. I think we just watched the beacon fly away."

"What?"

"I could be wrong," Shepard started up the ramp, "Like I said, let's go find out."

More deliberate gunfire from the balcony.

_Each round fired is for someone_, Shepard thought. _I hope it gives her closure._ As he and Richard jogged up the ramps to the balcony, the gunfire continued.

Shepard's ARO popped open a window in front of him, **WARNING: Triggers active, 0:03:21.88** and started counting down.

"The nukes!" Shepard selected the defusing app he'd used and sent it to the rest of the team. "We got three minutes! Here's the defusing VI; get on the nukes now! Williams, get the one to the west end of the balcony; Alenko, the other one on that side of the door; I'll get the last one as soon as I get there. Go, go, go!"

Kaidan continued to study his map. Geth robots were still there, but showed no energy signatures. He quickly stood and ran to the closer of the two bombs. As he ran, he saw that Ash had already arrived at the farthest bomb, but was still waiting for the VI to download.

Shepard remembered what he'd done to get access to the trigger's innards, "You'll probably need a multitool to get at the trigger, the service panel screws were welded on the other one."

"Got my knife," Ash pulled the combat blade off her right boot, "No screws on this one at all." She slid the tip of the blade between an external box and the outer casing, twisted slightly, stuck her fingers under it and tore the top half off with a metallic _crack_. "But mine's open."

The noise made Kaidan look up to see her standing there with the top half of the box in hand. "Wow. Careful, Chief." He twisted underneath each screw head, popping them off methodically.

"I know, nukes are nothing to sneeze at. But I'd rather get it defused instead of letting it sneeze at me."

Shepard came pounding up the ramp, spotted the last bomb and ran to it. His multitool already in hand, he fumbled briefly while trying to find a place to insert it, then read his VI's instructions and simply twisted access grips to remove the panel. "You got the VI yet?"

"Running it now," Kaidan said, "It says this is a Gorgon, but the trigger is unknown."

"Get at least two orthogonal scans of it," Shepard said, "You have a different weapon, you may have a different trigger."

"Mine's a Pegasus-2," Ash said, "Doesn't know this trigger design, either."

"Jenkins, drone aloft ASAP. I don't want anyone shooting at us."

"Right away, sir." Jenkins reached behind to his SmartPak, pulled off the microdrone he had used before, snapped a power cell into place, lowered it to the ground and hurled it into the sky with a grunt. "Drone aloft, sensor suite active."

"Victor Indigo, cancel drone view inset," Shepard said. He waved his omnitool down the length of the bomb, studied the analysis while waiting for the VI to figure out how to disarm the trigger. "Four completely different bombs," he mused. "You'd think these geth had to steal all their weapons." He shook his head. "They really cashed in the family silver for this if that's the case." His omnitool chittered and beeped to itself. "Jenkins, you've got the eyes on this. Don't let anyone shoot me in the back."

"I'm on it, sir. I've got your back."

Kaidan reached into the service panel, then withdrew his hand, and reached in with his multitool. "Willliams, you have a multitool? You can use mine in a minute."

"You're using it. Uh…Corporal…do you have a multitool? Can I use it?"

"You bet, ma'am." Richard reached down with his right hand, opened a belt pouch and pulled his multitool out. He looked away from his omnitool view just long enough to realize he shouldn't just try to toss it to her, and walked slowly along the balcony, closely watching the drone's displays, flexing the tool open as he walked.

Ash took it from him. "Thanks."

"Let me know if you need anything else, ma'am."

Kaidan sat back on the deck as his omnitool glowed and flashed. "I think I got it," he said. He turned to ask Shepard where he'd gotten a nuke-defusing VI, but saw a body on the floor a few meters to the north. "Man down," he muttered to himself, glancing at the omnitool. His VI was still counting down the seconds as it worked, but it looked like it knew what it was doing. Unable to leave the current task, he glanced at Shepard again, saw the Commander was also now in the waiting stage.

Shepard looked up just then, and nodded. "Think I've got it." He looked past Kaidan. "How you doing, Chief? You got that thing under control?"

"I think I got the complicated one," she grumbled, "What the hell is infrablack?"

"Switch your ARO to infrared, and then add the original spectrum back in. It'll jiggle your whole visible spectrum around so you see the spectrum that a turian would. Once you're in that mode, black is a different color."

Ash worked her omnitool carefully. "Infrared…add visible back in…" She recoiled slightly. "Whoa…that's weird." She looked down at the bomb again. "Oh. Infrablack. I get it." She reached in with Jenkin's multitool probe, seemed to find what she was looking for, and pushed the probe down firmly. The bomb jumped suddenly, sparks exploding in her face from the open panel.

"Shit!" She recoiled, steadied herself, and then held very still for a moment. She looked along the balcony at Alenko and Shepard. She held up a hand and looked at it. Her visor, which had automatically darkened, was just fading back to transparent. "Are we dead?"

"Don't feel dead." Kaidan smiled. His omnitool had signaled the trigger on his bomb was now inert; he got up, ran quickly over to Ash and her bomb as she swatted at her omnitool, trying to restart it. He waved his omnitool over "her" bomb. "Looks like you killed it," he said, thumping her shoulder in a congratulatory gesture.

"And my damned omnitool," she held her left forearm out toward him.

Kaidan gestured for a tech scan, waved his gauntlet over her arm. "Hm. Looks like it. No worries, we'll get it restored. Looks like your suit DCE is still running, though."

Shepard stood, rotated the selector on his omnitool, clenched his fist victoriously. The weapon sparked like a firework. "Got it," He said through a grin. He lifted his weapon into the air. "Alenko, Williams, Jenkins: Great work, everyone! We did it!"

Kaidan turned quickly. "Oh, Commander…we need NNP over here." He ran through the balcony access opening, and stood next to the civilian with a hole in his brain, pointing down at him. "I saw him while the defuser was running, but couldn't leave to do anything."

Shepard produced his sprayer of NNP as he ran, then slowed as he realized where the man had been shot. He sprayed NNP into the injury, ears and nose, then rose slowly. "Damn, this is probably just the guy who hands out peanuts on the train. What was he doing?" He sighed, "The brain is what we're trying to preserve," he said, "I don't know how much we can do for this guy." He shook his head regretfully. As he looked up, he saw heat haze and smoke about a kilometer off. "What the…" He jogged through an opening in the wall to the north. As he approached the handrail, the rest of the team came up behind him.

Where the landing field used to be was now a rapidly-cooling molten lake. Smoke billowed from still-burning fires, and the twisted remains of an automated cargo system reached into the circular depression like a deformed, three-fingered hand.

"My god," said Ash. "It's like someone dropped a bomb."

"That must be where the geth ship landed," Kaidan sounded numb.

Richard stepped up to the handrail, seemed to collapse as he leaned on it. "We thought Eden Prime was safe…!"

As he stood looking, Shepard noticed triangular depressions and crushed equipment in the smoking crater. On the level below them was one of those damned impalers, and a technological-looking pillar. Fortunately, no more dead bodies. "Williams, is that the beacon?" A green, rapidly-moving mist swirled around it, and it was emitting a green beam skyward.

"That's the beacon all right…" She managed to sound unsure.

Shepard ran down the ramp to the lower platform to be sure it was unguarded and intact. Putting two fingers to his ear, he said, "_Normandy_, this is Team Two. Primary objective has been obtained: Beacon is secured. Bomb threat to the colony has been neutralized. We need immediate evac. No casualties, over."

Meanwhile, Kaidan and Ash had walked slowly past him; Kaidan was effusive. "This is amazing! Actual, working Prothean technology. Unbelievable!" He stopped a few steps from the base of the ramp, taking it all in…and just a little bit leery of the unknown.

Ash had watched the beacon emerge over the course of its excavation, and was more familiar with it. Still intrigued, she approached it slowly. "It wasn't doing anything like that when they dug it up." She squinted, took a step to the side, another step closer. "Something must have activated it…" She continued to approach slowly, noticing the beam, watching the green mist-like movements of…whatever that was moving around its base.

The _Normandy_ finally answered, "Team Two, _Normandy_. Copy that. Enemy has ceased action. Uh…apparently they're just…shutting down. We should be on our way to you shortly. Secure the position and stand by."

"Roger, Normandy. Standing by." Shepard looked up with a mix of relief and confusion. _Why would they cause all this destruction, and then just leave without the beacon?_ He turned and walked back to where Kaidan was standing. He pointed warily at the beacon. "This is too easy," he said, "It feels like—"

A piercing, high-pitched shriek filled the area. Both men turned.

_The beacon!_

The green mist effect was swirling around Ash, seemed to be pulling her closer. She didn't pick up a foot for fear of losing what purchase she still had on the deck, and it was managing to slide her toward itself.

Shepard's first response was to treat it like an electrical hazard: He would have to throw himself at her to break its hold. Assuming the field was centered on the beacon (and subject the usual inverse-square law,) he pushed past Kaidan, ran up a couple of meters to her side so he could tackle her perpendicular to the direction it seemed to be dragging her. Arms open, he leapt at her.

And found himself captured in the field as well. Distractedly, he noticed his hair seemed to be standing on end. His whole body felt electrified.

_Goosebumps? _ He gritted his teeth. _I'm not losing anyone today_, he thought, and tossed her sideways, hoping to tear them both out of its grip.

It didn't work; he was still sliding toward it as the green, flanging scream rose in pitch.

He tried to drop to the ground, but it was lifting him as it pulled.

_**_ Urgent Knowledge Now. Attention! _**_

_It's too loud!_

His feet were off the ground, his head compressed, spikes thrust into his ears, standing too close to a jet engine.

**_ Not Prothean, not indoctrinated, must know, must understand..._**

_WAIT! QUIET!_

Something sharp and painful was pressing slowly into his forehead, being pried open–

**_ Dark Ones will come, have come. Stop them, MUST stop them...too late..._**

_TOO BRIGHT...!_

He was falling into the sun, standing under a huge waterfall, free-falling from orbit…

** No cost too great, they will never return...**

_STOP!_

Convulsing in agony, but unable to move...

** Do not resist death: There is no time left for us, and we will withstand the Ascension.**

_HELP!_

Frozen in fire, his mind bursting with information he could neither understand nor resist.

** We are doomed, but our knowledge persis–**

-black-

**# # #**

Having docked with _Sovereign _again, Saren had made his way to the space that had been set aside for him.

His head hurt, and everything looked reddish and dim, but he had used up a week's worth of the chemical that made it stop in the few hours he'd spent on that cursed human colony. He had to find out what was causing this.

Though the chair where he sat faced a wall, he could not tell with the ARA fully engaged; all he saw was the Search VI's interface. He unconsciously curled up on the chair, his left claw across his face, occasionally massaging his forescalp.

Benezia approached the chair that Saren usually sat in when he was disturbed or upset. _This will not be pleasant, but he must know_, she thought. "We've identified the ship that was there at Eden Prime: the _Normandy_, a human Alliance vessel. It was under the command of Captain Anderson." She paused, noticed as he shifted in the seat. "They managed to save the colony."

The dark throbbing in his head already had him annoyed; it was as if she had told him this only to highlight his failure _with the ship listening_. Saren had to act uninterested in the colony. "And the beacon?"

She realized too late that the crisis had blinded him to the wisdom of silence. "One of the humans may have used it."

Red light flared around him.

**FAILURE.**

His brain flooded with white-hot fury as Sovereign raged.

**THE BEACON WAS FOUND.**

Saren leapt from the chair, scattering equipment. He was partly aware of this and concerned about how he could replace it, part of him savored the distress caused. It was peculiar, watching himself behave this way, confusing as well. _I need to act like I'm as upset as Sovereign will expect, continue in its confidence. I must find out as much as I can_.

**KILL IT NOW.**

He continued his rampage, hurling another container ahead of him.

Benezia knew there was no reasoning with him for the moment; hands behind her back, she simply leaned aside to dodge the flying debris as he stormed up to her, put his face threateningly close to hers in an attack mode that was older than the species itself, and knew that this too, would pass.

"This human…must be eliminated."

***** Glossary *****

ARA: Augmented Reality Appliance. Surgically-implanted full-time Augmented Reality system often used by the handicapped, professionals who interact with it practically continuously, and dedicated hobbyists. Once installed, they allow a much more fluid interaction, but they are relatively expensive and occasionally troublesome. Nearly always used in conjunction with haptic interfaces.

ARO: Augmented Reality Overlay. Wearable Augmented Reality system.

DCE: Distributed Computing Environment

LOSI: Line Of Sight Intersuit. Short-range battlefield communications protocol.

NNP: Nanotech Neurological Preservative. A postmortem means to preserve molecular structure until a scan of sufficient resolution can be applied, or the molecular-level brain structure scanned for silicon simulation.

RPG: Rocket-Propelled Grenade


	8. Chapter 8: Normandy

***** ****Normandy *****

It was snowing.

_No…it's red snow…and it's falling too fast._

_Wait_, Shepard realized, _That's not fast red snow, it's raining blood_…

_Everyone's dead…_

Colors and forms moved, joined, split in confusing, meaningless ways...until the lights stopped moving.

"Doctor?" It was the voice of Silas Crosby, _Normandy_'s Senior MedTech. "Doctor, I think he's waking up."

"Lieutenant, he's waking up," Ash repeated, "Get in here."

Shepard blinked, squeezing his eyes shut, then opening them as friendly faces were just stepping into view. For a moment, he didn't move. He touched hands to legs, wiggled his toes. "Doctor?"

"I'm here, Stephen," the short-haired doctor said from across the room. "How do you feel?"

He paused. "You never call people by their first names unless you're about to tell them something bad." He looked down at himself. "But everything still seems to be attached."

As she stepped up the left of the bed, doctor's expression changed from concerned to amused, "Yes, everything is still attached. And as you can see, I don't just use first names to deliver bad news." She touched the control board, waved her omnitool toward him briefly, "You had us worried there, Shepard. How do you feel?"

Shepard lifted his left arm, found his unlit omnitool attached to medical equipment. "Well, I'm still worried…am I on life support?"

Chakwas glanced at the displays on the wall, checked her own omnitool, "Not really. I've had you connected to the brainbox because I couldn't tell why you were unconscious, or why you were staying that way." She pulled magnetic clips off his omnitool; he did not restart it.

Instead, he put a hand to his head. "What happened? How did I get here? Is everyone else okay?"

"Yes, everyone's fine…now. How are you feeling?"

"Terrific...next silly question." He sat up on his elbows, then laid back down. "My head feels huge…and…_full_. A bit of throbbing. But nothing serious that I can tell." He looked around as Kaidan jogged in. Everyone was in shipboard fatigues, including himself. "How long was I out?" He threw his feet over the edge of the bed and started to sit up.

The doctor looked up and left, checking an ARO clock. "About…fifteen hours." She stepped closer, gestured to medical data that only her ARO was showing. "Something happened down there with the beacon, I think."

"It's my fault," Ash said quickly. "I must have triggered some kind of security field when I approached it. You had to push me out of the way."

He turned her way slightly, but didn't look up. "Are _you_ okay?"

"_You_ were the one not waking up," she replied, "We were worried your brain got fried by that damned beacon."

Kaidan waved a thumb at Ash. "She took it kind of hard," he added.

"Hey!" Ash elbowed him in the ribs.

"Don't worry about it, Chief." Shepard put up a hand reassuringly. "All's well that ends well, right?" He winced before he could control it. "Nnggh…my head really hurts. Is my neurotech offline?"

"It never _did_ anything when they were digging it up," Ash interrupted. "We all thought it was just intact and could be reactivated if we could figure out how to get power to it. They'd already done full VRS [Virtual Reality Simulation] on it, and it was just a message relay and storage system."

Shepard put up a hand, "It's all right, Chief. You had no way to know what would happen."

Ash smiled faintly, and looked relieved.

"Actually, we don't even know if that's what set it off." Doctor Chakwas was still studying the instruments on her ARO. "Unfortunately, we'll never get the chance to find out. But to answer your question, no, your augmentation is all working fine." She pointed to a wall display that showed the various species of neurotech were interacting with his brain. It was just pretty lights to Shepard. He closed his eyes again.

"The beacon exploded," Kaidan explained. "A system overload, maybe." He shrugged. "I suppose they will bring the University team back in to pick up the pieces and try to reassemble what they had."

Ash jumped back in, "We might have known more if it had blown up in a lab, but I'm sure they had learned about as much from it as could have been learned anyway."

Kaidan continued, "The blast knocked you cold. Williams and I made sure they didn't leave without you."

Shepard smiled weakly, nodded. "You're good about details like that. I appreciate it." He looked at Chakwas again. "Alright, give it to me straight, Doc. How long have I got?"

"Drama queen." Chakwas smirked, then looked closely at Shepard again. "Physically, you're fine. But I detected some unusual patterns in the cortical columns of your prefrontal lobes, especially in layers IV and VI of your medial prefrontal cortex, and the anterior insula."

"Uh...yeah," Shepard answered. "So what does that mean?"

"Like someone poked you with a ghost stick." Doctor Chakwas pointed to the center of her forehead. "Right there. It was like…well…have you ever seen a freshly mowed lawn, and you can tell which way the lawn mower had been driven across it? It's like that. I can tell where it went, but not exactly where it started. But it was trying to manipulate your brain, and the effect persisted."

As soon as the Doctor had said 'you're fine,' Shepard started to get off the bed.

Chakwas continued, "But I also noticed an increase in REM and beta waves, typically indicators of intense dreaming. Do you recall anything?"

"I saw…" He touched his forehead with a couple of fingers. "Mmh. Nothing's clear. At the moment, I only have emotional impressions. Death…destruction…and a city…or something." He shook his head. "Nothing's really clear."

The Doctor shrugged noncommitially. "Hm…I'd better add this to my report; it may—" She stopped as the door hissed open.

"Ten-_haw_," Ash barked, snapping to attention and saluting.

"As you were," Anderson said before she was even done.

Chakwas looked up. "Oh…Captain Anderson."

Anderson looked from Shepard to Chakwas. "How's our XO holding up, Doctor?"

She inclined her head to the instruments on the wall. "From what I can see, everything looks relatively normal. I'd say he's going to be fine."

"Glad to hear it. Commander, I need to speak with you. In private."

Shepard looked toward Doctor Chakwas again. "We done for now, Doctor?"

"Of course," she said. "But be sure to let me know if you notice anything unusual. Oh, and be sure to drink a lot of water. Also, your respirocyte and hydrocyte counts are both a bit low." She proferred a tall tumbler full of what looked like water across the exam table to him. "Start with this."

"Will do." He took the tumbler, turned to the Captain. "Your cabin, sir?"

Anderson nodded.

"Sirs, I'll be in the mess if you need me," Kaidan added.

"Me, too," said Ash. "Thanks again, Captain."

"Don't mention it, Chief."

As they stepped out of the Medical bay, Shepard glanced over his shoulder as though he could still see the two younger soldiers, talking to each other and giving the two officers time to get to the Captain's cabin. He spoke quietly, "With her unit destroyed, I assume you absorbed her into the crew? Oh, wait a second." He stepped over to the wall-mounted food printers, "I could eat a moose. Let me grab something." He took a few steps aft of the MedBay door and waved his finger through one of the holographic keys on the Autochef marked **QuickPrint meal**.

Anderson spoke quietly as he followed Shepard to the printer. "I did. It seemed the most humane thing to do." The Captain nodded in thought as they watched the printer's status lights change. "And she was all over you. Not in a bad way, but it was pretty obvious she felt bad about what happened. Thinks it's her fault. You might want to make an effort to let her know you're okay." The printer chirped and hummed to itself as it scanned Shepard and polled his bloodstream computing to modify the meal for his current condition. Anderson continued, "Psych Personnel at Sargon said she'd do better somewhere without the reminders; she was housed in the barracks, so we picked up her gear before we left. Trident is sending in two units to replace the 212."

"Just two?"

"It's twice what they had. I suspect one will be completely focused on fabrication and Therapeutics. They have some rebuilding to do."

The printer tray extended with a pancake-sized biscuit on it. Shepard lifted the "OptiMeal" efficiency food immediately to his mouth, took a bite, chased it with a swig of the liquid from the tumbler, and headed port and aft to avoid the commotion of the mess. "But no GARDIAN systems? Have they still not learned the lessons of Elysium?"

"Colonial Admin still doesn't want those things looming over the colonies. Think of it from their perspective. It's like living with a Howitzer in your front yard. You can't sell people on the attractiveness of the colonies if every third photo or vid has a massive cannon in it."

Shepard swallowed. "I'll live with the Howitzer every day it prevents an Elysium."

"Or now, an Eden Prime," Anderson nodded, "I'm with you, Commander; but it's not our call."

Shepard put a finger to his forehead. "Hmm…note to self: Things to Do When I am the Galactic Overlord…"

Before them was a door marked "Captain." The door hissed aside for Anderson, and Shepard followed him in.

"Yeah, I know what you mean." Anderson sighed, crossed the room, sat down at the desk. Holographic displays winked to life as he waved at them. "Sounds like that beacon thing hit you pretty hard, Commander. You sure you're okay?"

"I'll be fine. But what about Nihlus?" Shepard dragged a chair away from the conference table and sat in it. "Did we pick him up? Or did you alert the Council…or whoever handles Spectres?"

"They found out on their own somehow...and asked me if I had any details. I debriefed the rest of the team, compared fireteam blackbox data, sent the whole steaming pile to Trident _and _the Citadel. Nihlus and his gear are down in the hangar, but it's out of our hands at this point."

"Nihlus is in the hangar? Not the Medbay? Is he going to be okay?"

Anderson looked pensive. "I won't lie to you. Things look bad. Nihlus is practically dead, but the only witness is a lightweight DFR-commercial piracy colonist. The beacon was destroyed, and it looks like the geth are invading. The Council's going to want answers."

Biscuit in hand, Shepard pointed at himself. "I'd like some answers, too," he said. "Why was Nihlus controlling all the intel on this? If we'd had some idea of what to expect…"

Anderson had his hands up placatingly, "That wasn't my call. The Council trusts the Spectres to handle themselves, and this was supposed to be about them trying you out." He shook his head. "Damn. Now I'm sorry I let you get tossed into that."

"I didn't do anything wrong, Captain. Hopefully the Council will see that."

"I'll stand behind you and whatever you want to add to the report. You're a damned hero in my book. That's not why I wanted to talk. It's Saren, that other turian." He shifted in his chair, pointed toward one of the holographic displays on his wall. "Saren's a Spectre, one of the best. A living legend. But if he's working with the geth, it means he's gone rogue." He turned back to face Shepard. "A rogue Spectre's trouble. Saren's dangerous. And he hates humans."

"Saren?"

"The other turian. The one the colonist saw and gave a name of."

Shepard's head still throbbed; it was hard to think. "He didn't go to Eden Prime because he hates humans."

"You're probably right. I think he was after that beacon. He must have booby-trapped it and left it for us to find. You're lucky you're not dead."

"The whole colony's lucky they're not dead; the..._geth_ were deploying over a gigaton of nukes. And rigging the beacon to self-destruct? That would have required knowledge of how Prothean technology works…at a level possessed by…maybe five people in the galaxy. _I_ doubt it."

"I still think Saren's aligned himself with the geth. I don't know how. I don't know why. But it must have something to do with that beacon." He looked at Shepard with a renewed intensity. "You were there just before the beacon self-destructed. Did you see anything? Any clue that might tell us what Saren was after?"

"The science team had figured out it was a communications device of some kind. I think it worked like neurolearning, but did it without direct contact. I remember some kind of…vision."

Anderson squinted. "A vision? A vision of what?"

Closing his eyes, Shepard tried to recall. "I saw…people…being killed. Synthetics, I think, were doing it. I'm…not even sure if they were big or small, they seemed to be everywhere. They were _butchering_ them." He grimaced, shook his head gently. "It hurts too much to think about. My head, I mean. My _head_ hurts."

"We need to report this to the Council. The scientists knew it was a part of a galactic messaging system, so whatever the beacon was trying to tell you, it's probably important."

Shepard's eyes snapped open. "What are we going to tell them? _I had a bad dream_? The only reason they won't be able to fire me is because they'll be laughing too hard."

"We don't know what information was stored in that beacon. Lost Prothean technology? Blueprints for some ancient weapon of mass destruction? Whatever it was, Saren took it." He rose from his chair, started to pace around the table. "But I know Saren. Worked with him…once. I know his reputation, his politics. He believes humans are a blight on the galaxy. This attack was an act of war!" He landed a fist on the table. "He has the secrets from the beacon. He has an army of geth at his command. And he won't stop until he's wiped humanity from the face of the galaxy!"

"Can we present our evidence to the Council? Have them freeze his assets, take away his RelayID? Put him in time-out, or whatever they do?"

"It's not that easy. He's a Spectre. He can go anywhere, do almost anything. As a matter of course, he probably already has four or five false IDs with him all the time. That's why we need the Council on our side."

"Right, but…at least if we prove Saren's gone rogue, the Council will revoke his Spectre status…won't they?"

"I'll contact the ambassador and see if he can get us an audience with the Council. Even if he doesn't, he'll want to see us as soon as we reach the Citadel."

_That_ was a surprise. "We're going to the _Citadel_?"

"We were asked to return Nihlus and his gear to the Spectre Office directly, and Trident approved it. We're also going to get the turians to give us some of their latest updates." He smiled to himself. "And I have a nice surprise for future ground operations." He looked at Shepard again, "Anyway, we're through the relay; we should be coming in to dock shortly. You might want to go round up the ground team, get 'em in their semiformals to meet the ambassador. Oh, wait." He gestured, manipulating his ARO. "Udina…hmm…better make that bristling battle dress. Udina will want to see value for money." He harrumphed to himself, shook his head. "Thank you, Commander." He turned back to the desk, which was his way of indicating the meeting was over.

Shepard checked the Ship's Status display on his ARO. **31:20 to Citadel dock**. He stood and saluted. "The team will be at the airlock when we dock, sir."

**# # #**

Having donned his cleaned and serviced battle dress, and tumbler still in hand, Shepard approached Ash, who was sitting at a table in the mess, toying with a plate full of food.

"Hey, Chief. How you doing?" He sat opposite her, noticing she had managed to actually eat absolutely nothing after a day spent shooting and running for her life.

"Oh…okay, I guess." She sighed. "Bad day." She frowned. "Your Mad Scientist CFS actually _tranqued_ me when I came aboard. I only woke up a couple of hours before you."

Shepard didn't look up, shook his head slowly. "I'm sorry we didn't get there sooner."

Ash turned to him quickly, "Don't get me wrong," she said, "I'm glad you're okay, Commander. But part of me feels guilty over what happened. If anyone else in my unit was still alive, I might not be here."

"You're an excellent soldier, Williams. I saw you at work. I like your _go get 'em_ attitude."

Ash looked away. "It was probably the drugs talking. I wanted those things dead."

"Don't minimize your work," Shepard said. "You made Eden Prime safer for everyone else. All the colonists still there owe you their lives. You defused a _three hundred megaton nuke_." He nodded and smiled encouragingly.

She nodded subtly, looked up at him again. "Yeah…I did. Well, I had your help."

"Couldn't have done it without you, Chief."

"Thanks, Commander. That means a lot coming from you. I've never met anyone who was awarded the Star of Terra."

Now it was his turn to look away. "It doesn't mean what you think it does."

"Held off an enemy platoon? Alone? With all due respect, Commander, I think you've got someone watching over you."

Shepard nodded. "Yes, I do. And he lives in _that_ stateroom." He waved a thumb over his shoulder at the Captain's quarters. "But ask me about that _cluster event_ at Elysium sometime…later. You've seen the docudrama approved by Alliance brass, and heard the fish stories from survivors on talk shows. I'll tell you what really happened that week." He seemed to deflate. "Things were pretty rough down there. You guys took the worst of it."

Ash looked away, seemed to lose focus. "I've seen friends die before. Comes with being a marine. And you never get used to seeing dead civilians. But things would have been a lot worse if you hadn't shown up."

"We couldn't have done it without you, Williams."

"Thanks, Commander. I have to admit, I was a little worried about being assigned to the _Normandy_. It's nice when someone makes you feel welcome."

"Don't get too comfortable yet. We're headed for the Citadel. Be there in about twenty minutes, and you get to join me and the skipper in an all-expenses-paid visit to Ambassador Udina."

"Ambassador?" She put an elbow on the table, dropped her forehead into her palm. "Oh, god. Shoot me now."

"What? You know him?"

"I'm not in the damn _mood_. I thought we were just going to drop off the…turian equipment." She paused, looked up, seemed to think better of what she was going to say. Resignedly, "Semiformal?"

"Skipper says, 'Bristling Battle Dress'."

She squinted at him. "We expecting a fight?"

"He said something about _value for money_. I suppose the Ambassador likes to think he's a BFD."

Kaidan stepped around the corner, wearing nothing but his pants and a smile. Toweling his hair dry, he dropped into the seat next to Ash. "Okay, I'm out." He turned to her, "Know where the showers are?"

"Showered when I woke." She glanced at his right shoulder, pointed at it. "You don't need a Final Coat on that?"

He shrugged. "It was a clean perforation…deep enough that it came in under the armor, not deep enough to damage bone."

"It'll scar," she warned.

"But it _feels_ fine. No warnings from the monitors." He flexed his arm, illuminated his gauntlet. "If it looks like it isn't healing well, I'll have the Doc fix it."

Noticing he had just activated his omnitool even though there was nothing on his arm, she pointed at him as if having a realization. "Wait…you're not a biotic. You're a Sentinel!"

He brightened at the word. "Yeah…I am." He turned the omnitool gauntlet off and held up his left forearm for her. "The omnitool I wear into combat is a hardened Serrice, but the implanted one was installed with my amp interface." He flashed a grin, "No bloodstream DCE required, and it's _also _a Serrice, so it was a perfect integration of…" He stopped as he saw her expression.

Ash shook her head slowly, a smile forming on her face. "And you are _such_ a geek."

He looked away, embarrassed. "Yeah…well…there's that."

Shepard tapped on the table as if calling a meeting to order. "All right, need to be focused for a moment here. Alenko: Good thing you showered; we're heading to the Citadel, gonna be there in about twenty minutes. Skipper wants us to meet the Ambassador…in full combat gear. We're going for the _clean-and-freshly-pressed_ look, not the _I-just-barely-escaped_ look."

He directed his attention to Ashley. "If you haven't already done it, _y__ou_ should stop in the MedBay, have Chakwas verify you don't have any WYDKTCHY." He shook his head. "You're gonna show us up in that white Phoenix gear. Udina's gonna think we had an asari along if you don't leave the top down."

Ash waved a hand at him. "Don't even get me started. The Sirta rep was on base a few weeks ago, and since we don't have any asari to show off their paramedic field armor, he asked me to do it. So they printed a set for me, and I wore it for the demos. He let me keep it, right?" She looked from Shepard to Alenko and back. "Yesterday was just supposed to be another snark hunt with the eggheads. Seemed like a good time to wear it…just to try it out. See if it was as helpful as they said in the field…"

Shepard realized he knew how this story was going to end, and interrupted, "But you have another set you normally wear?"

She seemed to brighten. "Hell, yeah. I wear an upgraded Predator H V. Full combat exoskeleton, medical enhancements, 80-boost VI-assisted shields, 30-second jump jets, and combat VI that's so smart it's almost illegal. I'm a walking _battleship_." With a confident grin, she brought a fist down on the table, rattling plates, flatware, and plastic cups.

"Hooah!" Kaidan barked.

"Well, I'd rather you wear that, Chief, if it's okay with you," Shepard nodded towards Kaidan, "Seems to have good effects on morale. And it looks more like the _Normandy_-standard Onyx that we'll be wearing."

"They transferred my locker and kit when I got reposted, sir. I wasn't going to wear the Phoenix if I didn't have to."

Shepard nodded. "Outstanding. I've got some bureaucracy to thrash out before we dock; Chief, I'd still suggest you visit the Doc before getting all shiny for the ambassador." He rose from the table, hesitated, looked meaningfully as Ash. "And Doctor Chakwas…has talsit if you need it."

Ash looked at him with mild surprise. "Not puttin' that shit _my_ head. Dad said to stay away from it."

He nodded. "Of course, Chief; that's not an order, just a point of information." He extended his right hand, palm slightly up. "I think you're gonna fit in here just fine, Williams. Welcome aboard."

Ash stood quickly, took his hand firmly, shook it. "Thanks, Commander."

They watched him walk aft toward the stairs, gesturing to his ARO.

Ash was still looking the way he'd left as she say back down. "Talsit? Seriously?"

Kaidan was watching the table, looked lost in thought.

Ash turned, expecting him to say something.

Kaidan looked at her briefly, then back to where Shepard had just left. "His wife…suicided."

Ash balked. "She _what_?!"

"They'd been married for…I don't know. Eight, nine years. It was while he was deployed. I think…I _think_ she did it with him watching on the comm."

"What the hell…?"

"He was…just a zombie for…weeks. Captain dropped him off at Elysium to catch a space-available flight with a courier…and…well, that was when the Elysium Incident happened." Kaidan shook his head as if to make the topic go away. "Aw, this isn't my story to tell. But he's been off the stuff for a couple of years now, and I don't think he'd have said that if he didn't think it was helpful. You can't stay on ET3 forever."

"'If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen,'" Ash said.

"If you can't stand the heat, _wear protective gear_," Kaidan parried. _She's not wanting to talk about this_, he thought. "Still, speaking of kitchens, if you're gonna go see the Doc, are you going to eat all that?" He pointed at the tray of food she had in front of her

"I told you, I showered last night." She looked at him, towel over his muscular shoulders, and smiled. "So go get your own breakfast, _Lieutenant_."

**# # #**

Shepard jogged up the stairs, stepped into the CIC and over to one of the consoles by the Command dais. Noting the file downloads were complete from the fireteam members, he reviewed some of the footage briefly, ran the RPGVI, checked its findings, added some commentary and tweaked its language, before approving and filing it.

With the geth potentially back in the game after centuries of hiding, analysts at Trident would be looking at the every hexel of data almost instantly. But he wanted to get it done so he could be satisfied he had done everything right.

It did not always bring peace, but it was the best he could do.

Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted Richard walking forward.

"Jenkins…how you doing? Did you go see Chakwas?"

The Corporal balked in mid-stride, turned and faced Shepard. "Sir?"

"Are you okay?"

"Oh, sure. I was first in line after they got you hooked up. I should be asking how _you're_ doing."

Shepard put a finger on the work surface to mark his place as he looked up at the younger man. "I'll be fine. How's your leg? And your gut injury? You were shot up pretty bad. I wasn't sure we did everything…there wasn't time."

"Oh, Doc said you did great. She was surprised you knew about that field splint. She even said you'd have made a good medic, but we'd have been the poorer for it."

Shepard leaned forward on the console. "No point in sucking up to _me_, pal; you and I are both being awarded the Cockadoodle Cross."

Jenkins expression changed to one of confusion. "Sir?"

"That's the You-Just-Got-Your-Ass-Handed-To-You medal. But mine was just a bronze Oak Leaf…'cause I've screwed up before." He held up a hand to stop the conversation. "New topic: We just jumped to the Widow; should be docking in a few minutes. Skipper's having us join him in a meeting with our ambassador, Donnel Udina…"

Richard gawked. "We're _going aboard_ the Citadel?"

"To hear Joker tell it, it's more like landing on a planet. The thing has its own gravitational signature. Weird and complex, too; not the sort of thing you can really do manually. Unless, of course, you're _Joker_." He glanced forward quickly. "Anyway, yes, we're meeting the ambassador. Skipper wants us there in Full Battle Dress. If you haven't gotten all cleaned up yet, get down there and do it now. ETA's about fifteen minutes. Be at the airlock by then."

The Corporal snapped a salute; Shepard noticed a twitch in the younger man's eyebrows. "Still healing?"

"Yes, sir."

He returned the salute. "Might be a good idea to get with Chief Williams and…the Fabrication Master. Can't think of his name at the moment. See if you can replicate that shield generator Williams was using. It'd be good to equip the whole team with that if we can. But worry about that after we get back."

"Yes, sir."

"Also make sure you eat before going ashore. You can burn through a month's pay just eating finger foods."

"Yes, sir. Thanks for the warning."

Shepard nodded absently. "I'll be on the bridge if you need me." Jenkins turned around and headed back toward the stairs; Shepard turned to his left and jogged forward, past the eight Department Masters in the Ops Alley. The smell of freshly-sintered composites was still occasionally present, and it made him just a bit less unhappy to be there.

_Captain Anderson's hand-picked crew, a state-of-the-art ship, and we might make a difference out here_, he thought. It made him smile with a refreshed sense of confidence. He stepped through the airlock foyer, stepped left at Joker's center chair and slid into his seat. The console lit its holographics, presenting him with more information than he could reasonably digest...but always let him know where to find out.

The pilot looked across at him, "Good timing, Commander, I was about to bring us in to the Citadel. We're about to clear the nebula, so you'll get a nice view."

"How long do we have?"

Joker waved at a display only he could see. "You should _start_ to see it now, the place is self-lit on the inside of the arms. But we should pop out of the Syncee Bubble in…three or four minutes. You'll get a nice view then, before we turn on final."

Shepard put two fingers to his ear. "Alenko, Jenkins, Williams. We're about to get a first look at the Citadel. If you've got a minute, you might want to get up here to see it for yourself."

He turned left and looked out the window; the cloud-like formations of nebular dust made impossible to see more than a kilometer from the ship, but at the speed they were moving, gaps occasionally flashed past, letting a view of the flower-like station's silhouette wink on and off. He checked a status board in front of him; apparently the ship had taken some hits from ground fire. Armor plating showed some damage, but otherwise the ship looked to be in good condition.

Still, there was a growing list of things that were in need of repair, consumables that needed to be replenished. Molecular manufacturing might have made it possible to build almost anything on demand, but doing so required feedstock of every element and a growing array of exotic generators; positrons, muons, and a few other energetic or highly reactive particles were necessary to fabricate the metamaterials that made the _Normandy_ possible. And it seemed like every deficiency that could have shown up in a shakedown had done so.

Ash was the first to arrive, heading straight to the port window and gaping. "Look at the size of that ship!" Prowling the approach corridor was an enormous shadow; as they arced around it, the shadow turned slowly, light from the nearby dwarf stars drawn slowly across its graceful, alien lines. Ash's ARO displayed relative size to Arcturus Station, Jump Zero, Alliance dreadnoughts, and the Brazilia Tower, things of which she had some sense of scale.

Joker turned to look. "Hey…Hey! No fingerprints on the windows, thank you!"

Kaidan came up behind Ash. "That's Joker. Don't let him rattle you; the windows are Vaxilon," he bent over so he could see out the windows, too. "And that's the _Ascension_, flagship of the Citadel fleet."

"It's the _Destiny Ascension_," Joker corrected. "And…well, size isn't everything," he added under his breath.

Ash glanced over her shoulder briefly, teased the pilot. "Why so touchy, Joker?"

"I'm just sayin'…you need firepower, too." Keeping Normandy's speed at the maximum allowed, he wove a course through the various refuelers, cruisers, and other traffic toward the backlit Citadel itself.

Richard came jogging up to the bridge, looking for a place to stand that offered a good view.

Ash hadn't taken her eyes off the city-sized asari ship. "Look at that monster. Its main gun could rip through the barrier of any ship in the Alliance fleet."

Shepard thought Kaidan sounded as if he was trying to reassure himself, "Good thing it's on our side, then."

Joker touched the tips of his fingers together, crossfading the full-immersion ARO into its SVS Mode. The bridge disappeared from his view as the array of cameras and sensor feeds became his entire experience. Faintly-glowing gold markers showed FPV, energy cue, relative attitude, navigation data, flight corridors, other vessels, fuel data, engine modular status, and a continuous parade of data.

He smiled unconsciously. He was no longer the pilot, sitting in a chair on the cramped bridge of a tiny Alliance frigate, he was a starship, soaring around other starships; free of gravity, unaware of the nagging pain in his body, seeing everything around him all at once.

Holographic gauntlets on both hands, he manipulated the flight control interface, performing a coordinated turn toward the massive turian dreadnought at their 2:00 high position. "Citadel Control, this SSV _Normandy_, requesting permission to land."

The reply came from the bridge speakers, "Stand by for clearance, _Normandy_." The VOX system chirped as it was briefly muted by the controller.

Raising an eyebrow, Joker selected the nearest approach corridor, rolling the ship in a corkscrew maneuver that didn't require compensation by the ship's gravitational director; inertia and centrifugal forces left the impression that the entire world was simply rotating around them. With an audience on hand, he was determined to give 'em the whole show…even if he couldn't see their reactions.

Ash turned to Kaidan, "Wow! How did we do that?"

Continuing smoothly through the maneuver, Joker tried not to smile; he almost succeeded.

Shepard held up a hand, "Quiet, he's listening. He'll think you're impressed." He leaned over toward Joker and stage whispered, "Act like you didn't hear that."

"No, sir, not a single 'Wow' can reach my ears." Joker didn't bother to turn; there was no one else in his field of vision to see.

The Citadel controller answered from the cabin speakers, "SSV _Normandy_, Citadel. Clearance granted, you may begin your approach on Corridor Alpha Charlie. Transferring you to an Alliance operator."

"Roger, Citadel Tower, _Normandy_ out."

Bringing the ship out of its graceful barrel roll, Joker smirked to himself at the annoyance his maneuver would almost certainly cause on the bridge of the patrolling turian ship. _And and now we're perfectly aligned with the orientation of the Presidium ring_, he thought.

"_Normandy_, this is Alliance tower. We have you in Alpha Charlie at 2700. Please proceed to dock 422. Final handover at one kilometer."

Joker nodded absently, gestured the PTT. "Alliance tower, _Normandy _acknowledging Dock 422, handover at one kilometer. Out."

Lights continued to stream by the windows from starscrapers and transparent pressure domes; only Joker could see their destination at this range. Slowly trading kinetic energy for pressure in the MEFGs and transferring it back into the ultracapacitors, he decelerated them steadily to 200 meters per second before having to resort to braking thrusters. He nudged the MEFGs to make it easier for them to do so, and to let himself savor the view.

Joker looked down and left at displays that only he could see. "Dock 422, this is _Normandy_, ready for handover."

"_Normandy_, Dock 422. Handover complete."

Even having relinquished control of the ship to the Alliance tower, Joker left his ARO fully engaged, watching for mistakes and corrections, noticing the tiny service crews inside and outside the pressure field, watching the SVS track alignment, nodding at the modifications that had been made to Alliance hardware even since the last time he'd been here.

When the docking clamps thumped into place, he looked around briefly, sighed, and dismissed the SVS.

Shepard was gone.

Glancing up at the mirror, he saw the battledressed team stepping into the airlock.

He leaned around his chair and called, "Have fun! Bring me something expensive!"

***** Glossary *****

BFD: Big Fat Deal

CFS: Chief Flight Surgeon

DFR: Digital Fabrication Rights

ET3: Technically "TC-5c," a therapeutic post-stroke neurotech developed in the early 2130s by Erizzo, Thompson, Tprrez Terapie, SpA (ETTT), but referred to by its manufacturer's popularized name ("ET3") rather than its product name (in a manner similar to how people will say, "I opened Microsoft" rather than "I opened Word.") The name stuck when the profitable but short-lived company was acquired by Amgen, which even went so far as to rename the product to "ExtraTerrestrial Thalmic Tranquility," which more aptly describes its modern application, and aligned with common usage.

Final Coat: a dermal reconstruction nanotech paste made by Organo-Endy, compatible with Sirta medi-gel.

FPV: Flight Path Vector. A ship's plotted trajectory, usually displayed on an navigational display or SVS.

ghost stick: fictional plot device from a popular vid series; a 10-centimeter stick capable of moving nonmetallic objects as if they were ferrous and it and it was an electromagnet.

handover: Transfer of flight control from ship's pilot to ATC, usually VI-operated.

hydrocyte: nanotech in the form of glucose-to-ATP converters.

"leave the top down": collapse a combat suit's helmet into its "off" position.**"**leave the top down: collapse the helmet into its "off" position

microbivore: nanotech in the form of artificial white blood cells.

neurotech: neurological nanotechnology.

neurotronics: neurological electronics; term can refer to either the wiring or the artificial neurons individually.

respirocyte: nanotech in the form of artificial red blood cells. Increases oxygenation efficiency by a factor of fifteen to sixty, depending on the user and other modifications, interactions with other tech.

RPGVI: Report Program Generator Virtual Intelligence

PTT: Press To Talk, effectively the transmitter switch on a communications system.

SVS: Synthetic Vision System. A 360-degree Virtual Reality mode that reduces everything to computer-generated imagery [CGI]. Prevents overloading glare, allows VI-controlled imagers to highlight potential threats at greater distances regardless of location.

Syncee Bubble: a formation of gases in the Widow Nebula between the mass relay and the Citadel, sometimes called "the Fog."

Talsit: a therapeutic drug, activated by automated neurotech. Most often used in cases of protracted depression, and available by prescription only. User controls in AR allow the brain to purge the chemical as it adapts. Controversial for its ability to attenuate specific emotions with such precision.

WYDKTCHY: What You Don't Know That Can Hurt You, pronounced "WID-kitchy"


	9. Chapter 9: Embassy

***** Embassy *****

With the airlock's inner door open, Shepard, Ash, Kaidan, and Richard stepped in.

Richard asked, "We're just waiting for the Captain, right?"

"Hey, I brought some concentrates in case you guys forgot to eat," Richard continued, "I hear it can be expensive to eat here."

"You heard right." Kaidan patted a legpocket. "Brought a kilo myself. But good thinking; it means you won't be mooching mine, right?"

Richard sighed. "Not if I can help it, sir."

Shepard smiled to himself, turned to Ash. "Well, look at you, Chief. You _are_ a walking battleship." Shepard's ARO switched to Analysis and covered his view of her with callouts identifying systems and their respective statuses. "Did you transfer that shield generator to this?"

"Yes, sir. You saw what it did to a Sirta Phoenix." She turned so he could see the SmartPak; technical callouts shifted around her as she did, some disappearing, new ones replacing them.

Footfalls announced the approach of Captain Anderson, in his service dress blues. He stopped, just outside the airlock and surveyed the team, nodded his approval, and stepped in, closing the inner door behind him.

He waited until the door was closed before speaking. "I don't know how bad this could get. I'd bet the farm that Saren's dirty, but the Council will probably dismiss our evidence. He has a long history of getting done what they want done, and they'll back him up because of it." He seemed briefly lost in thought.

"Equalizing interior pressure with exterior atmosphere," the Boatswain VI announced.

Suddenly he straightened, faced them squarely. "But you're all heroes. You saved the colony, and the Alliance knows it."

"Sir, do you mean the Council doesn't?" Richard looked quizzical.

"They know, but they won't care. Humans aren't high on their list of priorities. We established Eden Prime because the planet is an unpopulated garden world, but it's on the edge of the Terminus systems, so it's at risk from pirates, batarians, and so on. However, it's also outside Council space, so they don't have the authority to stop us." He frowned to himself. "But it means we're probably going to get an 'I told you so,' or something like it."

Richard seemed offended. "Won't the geth make them sit up and take notice, Captain? If they have a fleet of those dreadnoughts, we are all in some _bad trouble_."

"They may actually blame us for it. They will try to protect Saren; they can't afford not to. The ambassador is a no-nonsense guy, though; he'll step on their toes until they apologize. But we have to get up there; I have to make sure he knows the geth have turian weapons, and more importantly, that they have those massive super-dreadnoughts."

As the outer door grumbled open, the Boatswain VI said, "The Commanding and Executive Officers are ashore. OD Pressley has the deck."

Anderson immediately set off down the docking arm, speaking as he walked. "They've been hiding in the Perseus Veil for almost three centuries. It takes us about three years to build an Everest-class dreadnought, and we're limited by treaty...uh...of Farixen. The geth aren't. That means they could have a hundred…if they build them as fast as we do without the bureaucracy and second-guessing." He shook his head as he walked. "And that thing was twice the size. God help us."

Shepard's ARO displayed a message: **Exiting Alliance jurisdiction. **_**DisplayiD**_** active?**

He gestured to accept the status change. His name and other helpful information would be displayed to all systems that tracked such things, and to people who interacted with him. It made purchasing and exchanges practically frictionless, and kept people responsible for their actions, but had not quite managed to render introductions obsolete. There was still something personal about a handshake and a spoken name.

As they reached the end of the docking arm and turned to the right, Shepard noticed a pair of JGs approaching from the elevator. "Sir? Captain Anderson?" The tiny, dark-skinned woman had a walk that said she'd flatten anything in her way. "Lieutenant van der Reippe, ACL." She stopped and saluted crisply; her salute was echoed by the younger man whose name tag read **Jurek**. "Sir, there are reporters waiting in ambush for you at the bottom of this elevator."

"I'm aware of that," Anderson saluted cursorily as he walked, "We're going to wade right through them. I have a meeting with Ambassador Udina that starts about three minutes ago."

"I see you have brought backup, sir, but frankly, you don't stand a snowball's chance." She stuck a thumb over her shoulder, "They're at platoon strength, they have superior position, and they know you're coming."

The other soldier, a taller man whose complexion made it look as though he hadn't even seen a picture of a sun in months, started to smile, but managed to lower his hand from salute with only a slight waver.

"But if it's any consolation, we're here to rescue you, sir. If you'll follow me." She didn't wait for Anderson to slow down or even to reach her location; she turned on her heel and marched past the elevator, along the gangway to the back wall.

As they walked, Shepard noticed that the bay could easily have handled a larger ship…and this dock was using the largest Kiggs Field he'd seen. He turned to make polite conversation with the attractive JG; but her left hand was on her right-mounted omnitool, and she was subvocalizing.

_Probably texting Udina that we're here_, he thought. He glanced at the Captain. "Sir? Have you considered sending the dreadnought footage ahead? That's serious stuff."

Anderson nodded. "He should have gotten it from Trident…assuming they passed it on to him."

"If we're already late, maybe you want to make sure he's got it. And _read_ it."

Anderson frowned. "Donnel can be kind of cranky, especially if he thinks you're trying to do his job for him. He'll let you do it if _he_ asks, though."

The team continued in silence for a moment.

JG van der Reippe looked over her shoulder. "The word is that the Ambassador is planning to talk with the Council privately. Sounds like he's positioning this Saren thing as a way he can save the Council from being embarrassed." She stopped in front of a door. "We'll have to go through decon here, but there's a car waiting to take us directly to the embassy."

Decontamination took every bit of three minutes, which Anderson spent anxiously flipping through his omnitool, but there were two official Alliance cars waiting for them within ten meters. Van der Reippe had split them into groups while they waited for decon to finish, and hustled them aboard as soon as the doors opened; Anderson and Shepard took the car with van der Reippe; Alenko, Williams, and Jenkins took the car with Jurek.

The car accelerated as if catapulted along the short tunnel from the private Alliance access, and inserted them directly into traffic, at speed. Richard, who had been ogling van der Reippe until he found himself in the wrong car, now had a bird's-eye view of the Presidium ring. "Wow, this is _huuuge_!"

The hollow Presidium Ring was over a kilometer thick, and the sides of it were filled with solid structures; the appearance was of skyscrapers separated by parks and water features. The access tunnel had accelerated them into the traffic lanes with an artificial sky above, so the view from the car was a lot like riding above a small but advanced city in a narrow valley.

Lieutenant Jurek smiled and nodded, but kept his hand pressed against the Security Reader. "Sure is. I've been here a couple of weeks and it's still amazing. And wait until you see the Wards."

"We saw them as we were landing," Richard said, "But how do they keep the air in?"

The other man shook his head. "I _think _it's a kind of Kiggs field, but it's emitted by the station arms to a distance of seven or eight meters. I don't think anyone I know fully understands it. They warned us it doesn't have a sharp boundary. The starcrapers make it look like a groundside city, but they're all pressurized like any other station."

"So where are we going?" Ash asked.

He looked over his shoulder at her. "The human embassy. We're just bypassing Customs and stuff. Normally, you'd go through Alliance Dock Authority."

"This is faster?"

"Faster…and super rare. We're picking you up at the ambassador's request. I don't think he'd have done it except I think he wants you there for Show and Tell _right now_."

Ash nodded and looked out the window at the view below. "Gee, at this height, I can't tell the aliens from the animals."

JG Jurek didn't take his eyes off her. "Well, we're _all_ animals when you get down to it…but there aren't any dogs or cats or anything. About the most pet anyone can license is fish."

Ash pointed, "You mean _those_…are aliens?"

Again, the wiry man didn't bother trying to see what she was looking at. "If it's moving under its own power and it's not human, it's alien. They don't even allow mechs on the station…not since the geth uprising." He shrugged. "It's such a pain…me and Vandy get to do all the grunt work."

"Grunt work?" Richard turned quickly. "You guys are O-2s!"

"Yeah. Know why you won't see any Enlisted working here? 'Cos if you're not getting paid enough, you can't afford to _live_ here."

They rode on in silence for a moment.

"Hm." Ash sounded annoyed. "They've built themselves quite a lake. I wonder if anyone ever drowned in it?"

Jurek shrugged. "In two thousand years, I don't see how they couldn't. But it's just part of the hydrologic cycle here. You can't swim in it, they don't keep fish in it, and if anything falls in, the keepers go out and get it immediately."

"Hey, look...birds!" Kaidan turned his head to follow them as the skycar flashed past. "I thought you said there wasn't anything but fish."

"Those aren't pets. They're asari birds…I mean…they're native to Thessia. I suppose they're like pigeons…but they're prettier. It's weird…they hardly ever land…"

** # # #**

Anderson stepped into the front left seat, and the doors closed with a sigh. van der Reippe quickly maneuvered the car down the onramp. "Sorry, sir. I hope I didn't divide your team up incorrectly, but I need to speak with you and Spectre candidate Shepard privately." She didn't wait for a response, but seemed very focused on driving the nearly automated skycar. She glanced at the rear view and saw the other car close behind.

"I'm monitoring the conversation Ambassador Udina is having with the Council, and it looks like they're just stonewalling him. It's pissing him off." She glanced at Anderson quickly, then forward again. "You might only get there in time to be on the receiving end of him being unhappy. Brace yourself."

"Hm." Anderson nodded, paused to think. "Any idea why he contacted the Council before the actual hearing?"

She shook her head. "I'm just a lowly minion. I think he's pushing too hard, and they're not havin' any of it."

Anderson sighed, looked out his side window. "Well, at least he's trying."

van der Reippe smiled to herself, as if at a joke. "You can say that again. Sir."

Shepard leaned forward, "But what was he hoping to accomplish? We don't want to get there and start working at cross-purposes."

"Like I said, sir, I don't know, at least not yet. But he keeps talking about Saren as if he's responsible for the attack on Eden Prime. I thought you didn't even see him."

"We didn't, but th…"

"_Saren was there_," Anderson interrupted.

"And that shot Nihlus took looked like an assassination," Shepard continued. "I heard a Predator gunshot at a time that coincides with what the Field Forensics says it happened. Nihlus was carying all Spectre-issued gear, some really exotic stuff, so it wasn't him shooting _at_ something." He read from the VI's analysis as it appeared in a window on his ARO, "Entry angle, cellular impact propagation at the wound site, even hypersonic burn on the entry wound; he was really close to the linac that launched that round. The only thing we don't have is biometrics on Nihlus to correlate the timing. If the Spectre office will release his blackbox data to us, we can wrap this up in five minutes."

van der Reippe shook her head again. "Sorry, sir, that's outside my expertise. But it sounds like you can do something ambassador Udina hasn't been able to. Don't let him catch you doing it, though. He's a real glory hound."

Shepard turned to Anderson, "Captain, do you think he'll actually stand in the way of us getting the right thing done?"

"Not if we can get him to see past his planetary-sized ego."

Shepard put an elbow on the bottom of the windowframe and leaned to the right, watching the Presidium Ring race past. Though it was quite an amazing sight, he was reminded of a friend's observation: _To err is human. To err spectacularly, just add power._

"There's also the issue of Spectre secrecy," van der Reippe continued, "They may not let you access Spectre agent blackbox data. If they did, it could implicate Saren."

Shepard sat up again, "They'd protect a dirty agent? If he's actually working with the geth, the Council might as well shoot themselves in the foot!"

Anderson growled quietly, "Not like they've ever done _that_ before."

van der Reippe glanced over her shoulder at Shepard. "I just don't know that much about Spectre operations. We've had a few Spectre visits at the embassy – mostly asari…one turian – but I only knew they were there because I'd been informed. I was supposed to stay out of their way, give 'em access to whatever they wanted to see, and I wasn't supposed to say until they were gone." She shrugged. "Seemed like regular folks to me, though." The skycar slowed as it approached an opening high in the wall-covering buildings, appearing to slide sideways as it did.

They eased into a parking spot; the doors clacked and opened as the other skycar followed them in and parked in the farther of the two remaining places.

van der Reippe led them to a door, through the Security scanner, and into a small foyer. She waved a hand to her left as she walked across to the door opposite, "Just up those stairs and on your right is the ambassador's office. As this is a private meeting, I'll be leaving you here, but if you have any questions, the receptionist in the lobby can help, or there's an Avina terminal at the entrance."

Jenkins' eyes never left her, even after the door closed. "I think I'm in love," he said.

Kaidan made a show of looking at his omnitool. "Yup, it's that time of day."

"Come on, we're already late," Anderson said, jogging up the stairs. The door they found there opened into a spacious office; as they entered, they saw a man facing a holographic meeting interface like the one aboard _Normandy_. Three figures were displayed; the middle one was speaking, "…to present any evidence you have at the formal hearing."

The man had a fist raised, "This is an _outrage_! The Council would step in if the geth had attacked a _turian _colony!"

"The turians don't found colonies on the border of the Terminus Systems, _ambassador_." The salarian Councillor's hologram, scowling out from under a ceremonial hood, folded its arms.

"Humanity was well aware of the risks when you went into the traverse," added the asari.

"What about Saren? You can't just ignore a rogue Spectre; I demand _action_!"

"You don't get to make demands of the Council, ambassador," the holograph of the turian, hands clasped behind, shook its head.

"Citadel Security is investigating your charges against Saren," the asari added, "We will discuss the C-Sec findings at the hearing, not before."

The holographic interface quickly faded off.

With no one else to vent his spleen at, the ambassador turned with a sneer on his face. "Captain Anderson. I see you brought half your crew with you."

"Just the ground team from Eden Prime…in case you had any questions."

"I have the mission reports," Udina said ponderously, "I assume they're accurate."

"They are," Anderson said. "Sounds like you convinced the Council to give us an audience."

"They were not happy about it. Saren's their top agent. They don't like him being accused of treason."

Shepard folded his arms. "I don't know that it's _treason_, but killing a Spectre…isn't that like killing a cop, only worse?"

"Settle down, Commander. You've already done more than enough to jeopardize your candidacy for the Spectres. The mission to Eden Prime was a chance to prove you could get the job done. Instead, Nihlus ended up dead, and the beacon was destroyed."

"Nihlus _isn't_ dead…" Shepard began.

Anderson took a step toward the ambassador, pointed at Shepard, "That's _Saren's_ fault, not his."

Udina was unimpressed. "Then we better hope the C-Sec investigation turns up evidence to support our accusations. Otherwise, the Council might use this as an excuse to keep _you_ out of the Spectres." Udina stopped behind his desk, touched the interface briefly, and looked up at Anderson. "Come with me, Captain. I want to go over a few things before the hearing. Shepard, you and the others can meet us at the Citadel Tower, top level. I'll make sure you have clearance to get in. The hearing begins at 1300 Citadel time. _Don't be late_." Without waiting for a reply, he turned and stepped out the door. Anderson looked at each of the crew in turn, nodded approvingly, and followed the ambassador.

Ash waited until the door had closed. "And _that's_ why I hate politicians."

Jenkins, who had walked straight to the balcony railing, was looking out over the view. He gestured to it with both arms outstretched. "This is great! It looks like a business park on Earth!"

Shepard noticed his VI had added a countdown timer to his ARO clock. "Well, we have about fourty-five minutes. It might be expensive here, but they've gotta have something we can do for free. An observation deck or shopping or…something."

Kaidan looked up from the computer interface in an alcove. "There's a public terminal over here with full realtime if anyone wants a new NetBite."

"Good idea." Ash sighed as she walked over. Raising her arm, she tapped at the interface. "I lost a month's worth of local data when that bomb's defenses spiked me."

Kaidan didn't seem to be listening; he has a very serious expression as he read from his ARO.

"Something wrong, LT?"

"Hm? Oh, uh…probably not." He looked back at his omnitool as he read from his ARO. "Just…weird. I'll have to do a little digging later, I suppose."

Ash shrugged, looking down at her omnitool to check its progress.

Shepard had stepped over to the balcony next to Richard. "Your family okay?"

"Oh, yeah…I got in touch with them before we left Eden Prime. They saw the geth ship landing, but it wasn't near enough for them to get any mechs dropped on them. They're in town now, helping get supplies out, picking up the pieces." He chuckled to himself. "My sister thought she had to _join up_ to help with recovery."

Shepard nodded. "Good; glad to hear they're okay." He looked across the room at Kaidan and Ash, checked his ARO for the time. "Well, even in under an hour, we can see something besides the ambassador's office. Let's go have a look." He started towards the door. "Alenko, Williams; feel free to go off on your own, but just make sure you're at the hearing in time. I'd suggest we stay together, though, or at least close."

Kaidan turned off the omnitool's interface, followed quickly, "Let's go, then."

They exited the office, went back down the stairs they had come up upon arrival. The door to the parking lot was locked, so they turned left and went through the other door. Another set of stairs took them into a lobby with its entrance to their left, an asari receptionist near the back wall, and seating between.

Shepard stopped at the receptionist's desk, but didn't have time to offer a greeting; the asari looked away from the console displays just long enough to let Shepard know he was being addressed. "Good day, Commander; the human ambassador is up the stairs, first room on the right." The one glance was startling; the asari's attractively large eyes seemed to glow from within.

Shepard nodded. "Thank you. We're at liberty for about an hour; is there something we shouldn't miss while we're here?"

The receptionist's hands never seemed to stop moving. "This is the Presidium; more specifically, you are at the Citadel Sector Nine embassies. If you have more questions, please…feel free to access Avina." Looking toward the holograph quickly, the asari held up one hand toward the lobby entrance while the other continued working.

Shepard glanced over his shoulder. There was a small crowd of humans clustered around the holograph, listening as it talked about something. "That's Avina?"

The receptionist gestured to her console, looked up at him again. "Of course…that is not Avina _herself_, but the VI is designed to look and sound like her. It is the virtual guide for the Citadel. Feel free to access the terminal yourself." This time, Shepard's VI had switched into Analysis Mode, and highlighted the alien's eyes with a callout: **Retina construction allows greater light-gathering capability, similar to felines of Earth. Typical of asari.**

"What's _your_ name? What do you do here?"

"My name is Saphyria. I am the administrative assistant for the Sector Twelve embassies."

Shepard looked down at the console, and then back at the receptionist. "You look really busy; we'll leave you alone."

Saphyria looked apologetically at him. "I'm sorry, Commander. The embassies are the hub of all Citadel politics. When you represent trillions of citizens, it tends to get a little busy. Thank you, Commander, and have a pleasant day."

As they walked to the lobby entrance, Ash sniffed, "Well, excuse me."

"Aw, be nice. Most folks probably come in the front door and ask this VI. The uh…receptionist there looked pretty busy. Probably more than usual with Eden Prime." A window popped open on Shepard's ARO. A still of a blueframe VI face appeared on it, looking very much like the one they were approaching.

"Greetings, and welcome to the Presidium. Allow me to be your guide."

Shepard selected the **Accept** option, and the window expanded and slid to the right, revealing the whole head and shoulders. It was animated as it spoke, "My name is Avina, and I am pleased to be your virtual guide throughout this level of the Citadel space station."

Looking to either side, he saw that Kaidan, Ash, and Richard were all interacting with their own instances of the VI. He stopped short of the crowd, touched his left ring fingertip to thumb to activate the omnitool holo; a social cue that he was paying attention to augmented or virtual reality. He subvocalized as he spoke to the VI, "Who is…or was…Avina?"

"Avina T'yreen was the mission leader of the _Limalia_, the first crewed ship from Thessia to board the Citadel in 633 BCE by your calendar. I am a fully interactive virtual intelligence based on Avina. Programmed to provide spontaneous guidance at predetermined points of interest throughout this level of the Citadel. I may also be contacted through any of the Presidium VI terminals, or your personal omnitool, should you require assistance."

He shrugged. "Give me the tour."

"You are standing at terminal one two seven. On either side of this lobby are the embassies of the various Citadel races, along with a workspace for accessing the diplomatic archives, and the C-Sec storefront for Sector Twelve. On the far end of this level you can see the Citadel tower, where the Council meets regularly to discuss matters of interstellar importance."

"Tell me about C-Sec."

"Citadel Security serves as law enforcement for all regions of the Citadel, though the majority of officers serve in the Wards. Executor Pallin, a turian, is the current head of C-Sec. But individuals from virtually every species across Citadel space serve as officers beneath him. If you wish to learn more, Executor Pallin's office is located in the C-Sec headquarters."

The crowd of people had been dispersing as Avina spoke on Shepard's ARO; now that they were gone, he stepped up to the terminal and closed the ARO window. He spoke to the hologram, "Where are the other embassies?"

The figure picked up right where the VI had left off. "Each species in Citadel space important enough to be consulted on matters of galactic politics maintains an embassy on the Presidium. The volus were the first non-Council species to be granted an embassy, roughly 2,384 Galactic Standard years ago."

Ash lowered her omnitool and stepped over next to Shepard, listening.

The Avina holo continued, "As Citadel space has expanded, more embassies have been added. The most recently added embassy belongs to your own species, Commander Stephen Shepard: Humanity. It was added nineteen Galactic Standard years ago, despite some rather vocal opposition."

"Opposition?" Shepard tilted his head. "Hm. Who? And Why?"

"Some species felt that humanity was given preferential treatment. It often takes a century or more before a new species is granted an embassy. The Council gave a great deal of thought to this matter. In the end, they decided Humanity's impact on Citadel space was significant enough to warrant an embassy."

Ash raised an eyebrow. "Didn't actually answer the 'who' did it?" She shook her head. "Even the VIs are politicians."

Shepard continued, "How come the volus were the first species given an embassy?"

"In the early years following the formation of the Council, the volus were – apart from the asari and salarians – the most populous, and widespread species in Citadel space. They established many new colonies and trading outposts, and they petitioned the Council for a greater role in determining interstellar policy. In recognition of their work to expand interstellar trade, and establish a standardized galactic economy, the volus were granted an embassy here on the Citadel."

By now, Kaidan had joined them. Shepard asked, "Why weren't they made a 'Council race'?"

"The Council races have extensive responsibilities. They must provide personnel and ships for the Citadel fleet. They often provide economic aid in times of disaster. It would be unfair to demand such an enormous burden of a species unable to meet these obligations. The embassies allow lesser species to have a voice on the Citadel."

Ash turned to Shepard. "'Lesser'?! That's pretty damned arrogant," she snarled.

The hologram inclined its head slightly toward her. "I apologize if my personality has offended you. Please submit all formal complaints by email or RTM to the Citadel Tourist and Visitor Board."

Kaidan thought aloud, "I didn't see any orders for offloading Nihlus or his gear. I wonder how much it knows about Spectres?"

Avina answerd immediately, "The term 'Spectre' is derived from the branch of Special Tactics and Reconaissance. Each Spectre agent is 'hand-picked' by the Council. Their primary role is preserving galactic stability and resolving volatile situations that cannot be handled through normal political means. In this role, they are granted extra-teritorial rights and jurisdictions. Spectres answer to no law or authority except the Council itself."

Shepard had checked with Pressley via RTM while Avina spoke. "Pressley says they're offloading Nihlus and his gear now."

Kaidan said, "He still…uh…comatose?"

"His VI said 'estivating.'" Shepard answered, "And it was a turian _medical team_ that picked him up." He turned back to the Avina VI. "What can you tell us about the Citadel Council?"

"Originally, the Council consisted or representatives of the asari and salarians, the two dominant species in Citadel space. Roughly 1,304 Galactic Standard years ago, turians were invited to join the Council in recognition of the role they played during the Krogan Rebellions. Since then, the three Council Races have worked together to ensure the peaceful coexistence of the galactic community, while preserving individual autonomy for each species."

"It can't be as simple as that," Shepard replied, "There must be problems somewhere in the system."

"I am not programmed to make that kind of qualified judgement. My code is limited to information, and simple interaction simulations."

Kaidan said, "Well, the _goal _may be simple, but the means of accomplishing it could get complicated."

Shepard snorted. "I suppose it wouldn't be the first time a _mission controller_ has said something as unhelpful as, 'This mission is simple: save the galaxy, using…a banana.'"

Kaidan smiled to himself and nodded thoughtfully; Ash simply rolled her eyes.

Shepard spoke to Avina, "Alright, so what is there for tourists to see or do that doesn't cost a lot?"

"There are airtours of the Citadel available from the Presidium that start at 270 credits, though less expensive toward the ends of the Ward arms. There is a viewing area in the Wards access from which you can look out over much of the Citadel.

"There are a great variety of shopping areas to which access is free. If you are in financial distress, each ward has its own shelter area, where you can rest, apply for a credit extension, receive free or low-cost medical treatment, attend to hygiene needs, and secure working transport off the Citadel."

Richard looked up from his omnitool. "Hey, there's a lounge right over there," he said, "Can we just go poke our heads in there and see what it's like?"

Shepard looked at Kaidan and Ash; she shrugged indifference, he smiled as if amused.

"Five minutes," Shepard said. "I'm not paying twenty credits for a drink."

As they stepped away, Avina said, "Goodbye, and thank you for using Avina. Please enjoy your visit to the Citadel."

Shepard let his VI continue to study the tourist guide he had downloaded as they walked back through the lobby and into the left corner. The stairs there were a mirror image of the ones they had come down from the embassy.

As they went through the door at the top landing, his ARO displayed the Avina face briefly, then highlighted the door to their right. **Sector 12 Diplomatic Archives**, it read. They followed Richard through a door to their left.

Entering another small foyer, their AROs added, **Sector 12 C-Sec Storefront** to the door to their left, and **Fezziwig's Grill and Lounge** to the door ahead.

"Hm," Kaidan was looking over his shoulder, "I wonder what's in the Diplomatic Archives?"

Shepard nodded. "Go find out. You know which dead end we'll be in."

Ash watched him go, and then indicated the door to their left. "Do we want to stop in the C-Sec office and offer them our blackbox data?"

"Kind of surprised they didn't already ask for it." He turned to Richard. "Go on ahead. We'll catch up."

"Sure thing, sir." He ambled toward the doorway.

Shepard and Ash stepped through the C-Sec entrance and found a lone turian sitting at a desk. Shepard's ARO added a callout:

**C-Sec Executor Pallin.  
****Stand at ease, do not salute. Address as 'Executor'  
****Face Executor Pallin until interaction is complete.  
****Keep hands off belt and away from weapons unless they are already in hand.**

Pallin looked up. "Commander Shepard. I didn't expect to see you here. Did Ambassador Udina send you?"

"Good afternoon, Executor. In fact, he didn't. I have a meeting with the Council in about half an hour, and I'm hoping C-Sec's very hurried investigation has all the information from the Eden Prime ground team. I didn't know if you had our blackbox data, but I thought it might be useful, and wanted to personally make sure it had been made available to you."

"Sorry, Commander. I don't make a habit of giving out details about ongoing investigations."

"Quite all right, Executor; I'm not looking for information, I'm offering it."

"But I have not asked for it. For you to offer it suggests you have an agenda. One does not pluck the berry before knowing it is of plant and not wad'nes."

**The idiom suggests one does not grasp without knowing what is offered.**

**Wad'nes: a ferret-sized predator native to Palaven that lives in rocky terrain. It has an appendage that looks like a newly-budding plant; it will extend this appendage and remain very still for days at a time until herbivorous prey approaches and attempts to eat it, whereupon the wad'nes will sting and eat it. **

Shepard read this quickly and nodded to himself. "Hm. Very well, then. I'll confess to being a bit surprised to see you here. C-Sec's Administrative offices are elsewhere, aren't they?"

"I'm working from this office because I'm overseeing the investigation, and the proximity to your ambassador is helpful."

Shepard sighed. "All right, if you find you want our blackbox data, I'll be sure Ambassador Udina has it." He nodded politely. "Good day, Executor."

"Goodbye, Commander."

***** Glossary *****

ACL: Alliance Citadel Liaison

ARO: Augmented Reality Overlay

DisplayID: an opt-in technology allowing user identity to be identified. Ostensibly for security and commercial purposes - something like a civilian IFF - but also used as a way of knowing how to address someone without first being introduced.

Kiggs field: an atmospheric containment shield technology, used at docks and on warships to contain atmosphere and protect against some electromagnetic radiation. Most ships carry the generators but use them only if the hull has sustained damage that compromises atmospheric integrity. Warships use them only in such circumstances, because the field is easily detected at megameter ranges.

NetBite: An extranet protocol that allows a user's Pview (see Pview) of the extranet stay local to their processing for realtime access when no connection is available for realtime access.

Pview: "personal view," a VI-augmented assemblage of data from the extranet that a user is considered likely to access at any given time. It is necessarily a subset of extranet data, but still measured in petabytes or exabytes. Allows for an approximation of functional extranet access without actually having it.

RTM: Realtime Text Message

SmartPak: VI-controlled backback that interacts with armor and user interface to carry, present, recharge, and retain a soldier's weapons.


	10. Chapter 10: Council Hearing

***** Council Hearing *****

They started across the short distance to Fezziwig's, but as the C-Sec storefront door closed behind them, Ash huffed, "What the hell was the point of _that_?"

Shepard shook his head. "Sorry. Turian things tend to be highly procedural, and without knowing what the procedure is, we can't do much."

"So they really are stick puppets? Why did we even bother?"

"Because I forgot that aliens are…_alien_." He shook his head ruefully. "My mistake."

From the bar's entrance, they could see Richard at the kiosk, talking with the attendant, a short-haired man with a goatee. As they approached, they could see him waving across the lake to his right as he spoke to the young soldier.

"…and across the bridge, you'll find the bank, the emporium, and Sha'ira's. If you haven't heard of her, you soon will. If you need supplies, you can try the markets, one level below. For nearby entertainment, I'd try Flux, or Chora's Den."

Jenkins noticed that Shepard and Williams had just arrived, and smiled self-consciously. "Okay, I'll bite. What is Sha'ira's?"

"The Consort? Uh, she entertains clients who can afford her _services_. Most of the diplomats and ambassadors have visited her at one time or another. She's a very powerful asari, but also very respected." He made brief eye contact with the other two soldiers, noting their arrival. "As far as I can tell, there's more _talking _than…" he gestured vaguely, "Well, you know."

Richard frowned thoughtfully. "Sounds kinda out of my league," he said, "What is there that a soldier might like to do?"

"Well, Flux has gambling and dancing…certainly more lively than _this_ place. Chora's Den, on the other hand…_weeell_, let's just say it's livelier and _deadlier_ all at the same time." He looked at Ash again, then seemed to at last notice the armor they were all wearing. "Though you look like you're no stranger to that. That's full combat gear, isn't it?"

"Sure is," Ash said with a nod. "It's a jungle out there."

He shook his head sadly. "No kidding. Jeez, did ya hear about Eden Prime?"

She nodded grimly. "Just left there."

The attendant looked stunned. "You…" he paused, glancing from one soldier to the next, and then suddenly decided something. "You…the four of you…get drinks." He reached behind the counter and produced a collection of glasses, set them on the counter together. "On the house. What'll it be?"

"Can it be a rain check?" Shepard asked. He touched his thumb to ring finger, illuminating the omnitool gauntlet, "We're due at the Council Chamber in the next half hour. Need to be sharp."

The man nodded. "I suppose it might get awkward if you were drunk enough to tell them what to go do with themselves."

Ash tapped the countertop with an index finger. "I will have a shot of slivovitsa…and I will have it again when I get back."

The man nodded once, snatched a shot glass out of the collection, turned to the equipment behind him and, seemingly without stopping, spun all the way around with the glass now filled. "Slivovitsa."

Ash picked it up, turned to face Shepard. "I _do_ want to be drunk enough to tell them what to do with themselves." She threw the contents of the glass down in a single gulp, gasped and winced as if in pain. "Yeow! What's that? 180 proof?"

The man beamed at her. "Why yes, it is."

She smacked her lips, looked up and away. "But this was made with _real_ plums."

Richard tilted his head. "What? You can taste that?"

Ash was still looking at the server. "Oh, yes I can." She nodded and smiled. "That's nice. Thank you, I needed that." She winced again. "Damn, that's good stuff. Where'd you get it?"

He winked, shook his head, and turned to Richard expectantly.

The younger man looked quickly at the glasses. "Uh…thank you. I'm not thirsty. And I don't drink."

Ash reacted. "Seriously?" She shook her head. "What a waste of a liver." She turned to Kaidan. "How about it, LT?"

Kaidan shrugged. "Ah…I'd like to toast at our victory dinner, but…uh…I probably shouldn't show up in front of the Council carrying a frothy mug."

Ash smacked the glass down on the counter. "Fine. I just drank all three of you under the table."

"By default," Shepard said. "I'm sure Lieutenant Alenko here could give you a run for your money. He's from Canada; they drink like fish."

"Lagers," Kaidan held up a hand as if to clarify, "Just lagers."

Shepard's ARO flashed the time at him. "And we now have about 20 minutes to get to a place we don't know where it is." He turned to the attendant. "Can you tell me how we get to the Council Chamber?"

The man lit his omnitool, spun the hand controls, and pinched an icon, holding it out to Shepard. "Sure thing; there ya go. Twenty minutes? Better hurry; there's a _long_ elevator ride."

Shepard held out his omnitool, and accepted the glowing token. The holo winked out as the data displayed on his ARO. "Come on, team; this could be close." He turned and jogged out of the lounge immediately.

He continued down the hall, past the C-Sec storefront, made a right, and went through the door. A digit flick displayed a rear view on his ARO; the three other soldiers were right behind him. Down the stairs, out of the lobby, turning right again, and heading along a broad walkway, open on the left. As they jogged along, Shepard found himself glancing toward the pervasive water features; it looked like they ran all the way around the Presidium ring.

A green-clad salarian saw them coming and stepped out of the way.

Jenkins stopped in front of the alien, extended a hand. "Hi, how are you? I'm Richard Jenkins, Systems Alliance. You looked a little nervous there, and I wanted to let you know everything's okay."

"Keep up, Corporal!" Shepard barked over his shoulder. "We don't want to be late!"

The salarian had taken Richard's hand and shaken it as his VI prompter had suggested, but he just stood there looking after them as Richard turned and trotted off.

Richard waved over his shoulder, "Have a great day!"

"Thank you!" came the faint reply.

Ash teased, "Makin' nice with the bug-eyes monsters, Corporal?"

Kaidan was still looking around as they jogged along. "I don't know, Chief...I think _we're_ the bug-eyed monsters here."

Shepard, still following the navigational instructions on his ARO, turned right with the walkway, then left across a landing and down a gently-curving bridge. A holographic arrow over the handrail indicated the Citadel tower was the tall structure on their left. "Looks like we might be in for an elevator ride," he said, "I hope it isn't _that_ long."

Kaidan noticed the fountain on their right was amazingly quiet, almost surreal. The trees looked well-manicured and the lighting was even and pleasant. "I hope we'll get to spend some more time here, I've never seen anything like this outside of trideo vids."

Jenkins had double-timed his way up alongside Shepard. "Yeah," he agreed, "It looks just like what you see in _Updater_."

Kaidan continued to look around as they jogged past a parked taxi and down a short set of stairs. "They don't shoot it here; it's all CGE."

Richard shrugged."Well, they do a fine job of it. Or else they clean the place up quickly."

"They'd better…have you seen the kind of fights she gets into?"

"Right; they wouldn't let them do that sort of stuff here."

In front of the entrance to the Citadel Tower was a squat green alien with four legs and four arms. Glancing up at them and then looking away, it appeared to be operating or otherwise using a wall-mounted holographic interface.

Ash reacted first, "Look at that bug thing over there. What's it doing?"

Jenkins veered off to their left and stopped by it, looking first at the interface it was using, then at the insect-like thing itself.

It seemed to be ignoring him effortlessly.

As Richard leaned his head up for a closer look, the Avina terminal standing next to it said, "Please do not disturb the Keepers." His ARO popped up an opaque message directly in front of him. **Warning: Citadel policy does not allow disruption of Keeper activities. Violation may result in removal from the station. CCC 5731.143.20 **

Shepard continued without stopping, "We'll find out later," he said. "Here's the elevator. Come on, Jenkins."

**Citadel Tower Entrance**, read his ARO. There was a short, very white-walled hallway that led to the elevator. Scanners overhead flicked across the four soldiers as they passed; the door to the elevator lowered as they approached. As Richard slowed to a stop inside, the door rose back into place, and the elevator accelerated upward.

Shepard's ARO blinked yellow. "We should be okay now."

Ash could feel a sense of warmth settling into the pit of her stomach, and realized it might be a bad idea for her to talk to authority figures. "The Council aren't going to ask me any questions, are they?"

"We've made our reports," Kaidan answered, "Now we just have to trust Ambassador Udina."

Ash shook her head. "_Noooo_, we don't, sir."

Richard snorted a laugh.

Kaidan cast a sidelong glance at Ash. "Did you get bit by a politician when you were just a kid?"

Ash folded her arms across her chest. "Everybody does. Some of us remember."

Suddenly there was space outside the glass-doored elevator. The view of the Widow Nebula was practically unobstructed; brilliantly-glowing gases surrounding a binary neutron star. While the stars were so heavily obscured as to be invisible, they suffused the nebula with enough light that it was easy to imagine one was looking at the entrance to Paradise.

His mouth open, Richard took a step toward it, put a hand against the glass. "Look at that," he said breathlessly, "…it's _beautiful_."

Shepard looked up and found himself liberated of his introspection. He nodded agreement. "Sure is. I wonder why the Protheans built the Citadel here."

They rode in silence for a few seconds before Richard asked, "What? 'Protheans'? I thought the asari built it."

"The asari _found_ it. They were the only ones here for most of a century until the salarians popped out of the relay." Shepard waved a thumb over his shoulder.

"You ever met a salarian?"

"Spent a day's leave on Sur'Kesh. Took a skytour of Talat; that's the capital." Shepard wasn't feeling very talkative.

Richard, looking out the window again, nibbled silently on a fingernail for a few seconds. Eventually, he asked, "Do this thing have an in-flight meal or anything?"

Kaidan stage-whispered to Shepard, "Maybe we should have docked someplace closer."

Shepard, who hated being late, grunted a noncommittial, "Hm."

Kaidan lit his omnitool and held it to the wall, then to one of the glass doors, then the ceiling. "Well, they're scanning us like crazy. Looks like about…four sensors...per red blood cell."

"I suppose they have to be careful," Richard looked around at the walls suspiciously, "You don't want someone releasing a bioweapon or something."

The elevator finally slowed and stopped; the door lowered into the floor.

"About time," Ash grumbled.

The Council chamber was not just a room; had they not been exposed to the vast spectacle of the nebula, it probably would have seemed like stepping outside. From the elevator doorway, Shepard's ARO told him the windows in the distance were 400 meters away. Trees and planters were visible everywhere in the low light; the short walkway ended in a flight of stairs up to a small courtyard with a water display at its center.

As they started up the stairs, they could see two C-Sec personnel talking. The turian on the left was saying, "Saren's hiding something!" He held up his omnitool as if to show the other turian something. "Myvas has two leads right here on the Citadel, active right now; give me more time…just ten minutes. Stall them!"

Shepard's ARO put callouts on them as they stepped closer. **Citadel Security Officer Garrus Vakarian** on the left, **Executor [Private Mode] Pallin** on the right.

The executor shook his head. "Stall the Council? Don't be ridiculous. Your investigation is over, Garrus. Get back to HQ and generate a report on this _non-event_." The Executor turned and walked away.

The four humans arrived at the top of the stairs; the turian turned and spoke to the human that his ARA indicated had the highest rank.

"Commander Shepard? I'm Garrus Vakarian, C-Sec. I'm handling the investigation…uh…I _was_ the officer in charge of the investigation into Saren Arterius."

As his own ARO prompted him, Shepard performed a turian greeting; he bowed his head slightly, and made a fist with his right hand, arm at a 90-degree angle. ("Imagine you're holding a spear at Salute, and it makes more sense," a turian had once explained to him.) "Why is C-Sec handling this? Don't the Spectres have an Internal Affairs department?"

Garrus put his right hand to his belt; Shepard's ARO informed him this was a normal response.

"No, actually." Garrus shook his head. "If there was a complaint of some kind brought against them, it would almost certainly be dismissed. Spectres are…ah…"the turian checked himself, shook his head again. "Basically the only way to bring a Spectre agent to account is if they kill a Council member. Or another Spectre." He glanced to his left, toward the Council forum.

Ash raised an eyebrow. "Which he almost certainly did…"

Garrus turned to Shepard, indicating where the other turian had gone. "And that was Executor Pallin, my boss. He'll be presenting my findings on Saren to the Council. I have two solid leads on him, and my partner is working them right now; they're current and critical to the case. The Executor is shutting me down because he thinks there's nothing to be found, but I know Saren's dirty. The Executor's going to go in there and tell them nothing!"

_Turians don't act like this_, Shepard thought, _He's almost frantic._ His ARO agreed, indicating that this C-Sec officer was highly agitated.

"Sounds like you really want to bring him down."

"I don't trust him." The turian seemed to be trying to read his ARO. "Something about him…uh…_rubs me the wrong way_." He gestured to his ARO, dismissing it. "But he's a Spectre; everything he touches is classified. I can't find any hard evidence yet."

Kaidan took a step toward the windows in the distance. "I think the Council's ready for us, Commander."

The turian glanced over his shoulder. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to delay you. Good luck, Commander. Maybe they'll listen to you."

"I hope so," Shepard said, "Thank you, Officer Vakarian." He turned and jogged away quickly with the rest of the team.

They made their way around the fountain to the right, where a human in an up-to-the-minute red-and-white business gown leaned against the rail. Another flight of stairs led to a landing. The lighting was hued in magentas and purples, trees and plants illuminated in salmon. The effect was somber and quietly disheartening. Everywhere was a faint scent of…something distantly familiar. Shepard looked around for its source. _Later_, he chided himself.

Kaidan noticed, "You sure have to climb a lot of stairs to get to the Council. You suppose that's supposed to be symbolic of their importance?"

"I bet they're not just for show," Ash replied, "They make for good defensive positions if this place is attacked."

Another set of stairs divided by a planter took them up to a small oval park. Benches surrounded a decorative rock formation; a man in a mostly white business suit sat nearby. They jogged past him on the right.

Two aliens were talking outside a breakout room; a salarian was saying, "…don't be ridiculous. The volus won't be joining the Council for years."

The turian answered, "I'm not so sure. The humans are making a strong push and you can bet the volus will be right on their coattails if they succeed." Shepard slowed his pace slightly, and his VI noticed his attention shift to the conversation. It activated and tuned directional mics on the back of his suit.

The salarian replied, "Allowing the humans to join is a sound strategic move. But the volus? No. The hanar are likely to be next, then the elcor."

The path before them widened as they went deeper into the room; two smaller circles of greenery were on either side of another set of stairs, this time four parallel sets of them. Shepard's suit continued to eavesdrop on the conversation behind them.

"You may be right," said the turian, "But the hanar need to lighten up a bit first."

"You just don't like them because you have trouble understanding them…"

As they reached the top of the stairs, his suit gave up trying to isolate and enhance the conversation; it also happened that they found Captain Anderson. He looked annoyed, and waved up the stairs, "Saren called in early; he has a lot of pull with the Council, so the hearing's already started. Come on." Shepard's ARO timekeeper agreed: they had a minute to spare.

_Better not screw up_, Shepard thought. He gestured for 4x cognitive acceleration; the world seemed to slow around him. He was glad of the extra time to inspect the audience chamber as he stepped up to its highest level.

At the end of the room stood the Council, each with fully-immersive augmented reality control pedestals before them. Shepard's ARO identified them as **Sparatus, Tevos, **and **Valern**; turian, asari, and salarian, respectively. Higher, and to their right, was an oversized monochrome holograph of Saren Arterius. As the five humans walked to the end of the cantilevered platform, Shepard noticed the small park underneath, and the five meters of separation the Council had placed between themselves and anyone else.

He thought to his VI, _Why the gap?_

His ARO displayed a translucent pop-up: **In 00700CE, krogan warlord Kreddik attacked the Council. The Audience Chamber was modified to prevent this happening again.**

"…the geth attack is a matter of some concern," Tevos was saying, "But there is nothing to indicate Saren was involved in any way. Mass relay transit records indicate he was on Noveria at the time of the geth attack on Eden Prime, and is still there now. The investigation by Citadel Security turned up no evidence to support your charge of treason."

Udina growled, "An eyewitness saw him kill Nihlus in cold blood."

Valern shook his head, "We've read the Eden Prime reports, Ambassador. The testimony of one traumatized dockworker is hardly compelling proof."

"_Exactly_, Councillor," Shepard stepped up alongside Udina, "That's _exactly_ the reason we need access to Agent Kyrick's blackbox data. And Agent Arterius'. When will these records be available for inspection by this Council, and presumably made part of this investigation?"

The hologram of Saren folded its arms, "Spectres do not use blackbox recorders. We're not feral hairless monkeys of Earth; we are professionals, entrusted with galactic peace." The hologram turned its head and addressed the Council. "I resent these accusations. Nihlus was a fellow Spectre. And a friend."

Anderson stepped forward. "That just let you catch him off guard!"

Saren regarded the human for a moment, almost as if not recognizing him. "Captain Anderson. You always seem to be involved when humanity brings false charges against me. And this must be your protégé, Commander Shepard. The one who let the beacon get destroyed."

Shepard recoiled. "Have you actually bothered to read the report? Nobody touched the beacon, it self-activated. How could we possibly have known it would do what it did? If _you_ knew, why have you not made this part of the Prothean Artifact Discovery Protocol?"

"Shift the blame to cover your own failures? Just like Captain Anderson. He's taught you well. But what can you expect…from a _human_?"

"Insults instead of evidence or a relevant reply?" He pointed at Saren, addressed the Council, "Is this what the Council should expect from a _turian Spectre_?"

Saren hissed, "Your species needs to learn its place, human. You're not ready to join the Council; you're not even ready to join the Spectres!"

Udina was incendiary, "He has no right to say that! That's not his decision!"

The asari Councillor looked toward Saren, "Shepard's admission to the Spectres is not the purpose of this meeting–"

"This meeting _has_ no purpose," Saren interrupted, "The humans are wasting your time, Councillor. And mine."

Shepard realized Saren might have a way to either insert false data…or that the Council was stonewalling because the turian was doing what they had asked but had to officially deny…or the turian was lying to them about what he had actually done. "Agent Arterius, you are hiding behind your position as a Spectre. This Council needs to know what happened to Agent Nyrick. Even my field forensics software showed that he was assassinated–"

"What this Council needs is _evidence_," Valern snapped, "So far, you've offered us none."

"We need the evidence of what happened to Agent Kyrick. You're telling me that no cameras, no recorders, nothing can explain what happened to him?"

Saren answered quickly, "That's right, human. To be a Spectre is to be trusted by this Council."

Shepard looked up at the hologram, back at the salarian, and then to the hologram again. "The evidence I'm asking for would exonerate you. Nearly everyone in the galaxy uses–"

Saren interrupted, "Human, what part of 'No' are you incapable of understanding?"

Captain Anderson held up a silencing hand. "All right, so there's no record of what happened. There is still one outstanding issue: Commander Shepard's vision. It may have been triggered by the beacon. Or even directly induced _by_ it."

Shepard's eyes widened as Anderson spoke. He thought, _You aren't actually going to tell the Council about that, are you?_

Though Saren's cybernetics made it difficult to tell even for other turians, the hologram of the Spectre all but sneered. "Are we allowing _dreams _into evidence now? How can I defend myself against this kind of testimony?"

"I agree," the turian Councillor managed to sound like he was doubtful. "Our judgment must be based on facts and evidence, not wild imaginings and reckless speculation."

Shepard raised his open hands as if shrugging, "I can't believe that the Spectres, accountable only to the Council, _are not even accountable to the Council_. You really trust Spectres so profoundly that you really do not use blackboxes?"

His cognitive overclock allowed Shepard to see the salarian Councillor's quick glance toward the others, and their glance back at him, and then his VI popped a relevant fact on his ARO: **82% of credible online sources consider the Council oversight of Spectres to include blackbox data, but this is not acknowledged by the Council.**

Valern clasped his hands behind his back. "Then let us stick to the facts. Do you have anything else to add, Captain Anderson? Commander Shepard?"

Shepard frowned. "Not if you won't allow blackbox data from Nihlus or subpoena it from him. When I offered our blackbox data to the head of C-Sec, he turned me down flat. " He jabbed a finger at Saren. "If he's innocent, he has nothing to hide. If he's not, he's using you."

With their neurotronic interfaces, the Council was able to exchange messages almost as fast as they could be thought. Tevos messaged, **He is correct; Saren may be hiding something from us.**

Sparatus messaged back, **Agent Saren has never put his personal interest before those of this Council. He's even paid dearly for it.**

Valern added, **And yet today he seems demanding…almost belligerent, though. I am concerned.**

**Then I move we adjourn and discuss**, Tevos texted. **Do we have grounds to disbar Saren?**

Sparatus shook his head negatively. **No. But I second the motion to adjourn.**

Tevos nodded, and turned to face the humans. "The Council has found no evidence of any connection between Saren and the geth. Ambassador, your petition to have him disbarred from the Spectres is denied."

Saren regarded the humans. "I'm glad to see justice was served."

"Served?" Ash snorted. "Yeah, right." She turned immediately and walked away.

"This meeting is adjourned." The Councillors moved quickly out of sight.

Kaidan and Richard followed Ash; Shepard and Anderson glanced at each other and turned away after a pause. Udina remained at the end of the platform for a moment, as if he could make it all not happen by sheer force of will. A glance over his shoulder confirmed that he was all alone. At last, he turned away reluctantly.

The humans grouped themselves to one side of the platform's entrance.

"It was a mistake bringing you into that hearing, Captain," Udina scowled. "You and Saren have too much history. It made the Council question our motives."

Anderson shook his head. "I know Saren. He's working with the geth for one reason: to exterminate the entire human race. Every Colony we have is at risk. Every world we've colonized is in danger. Even Earth isn't safe."

Ash said, "Maybe we need to deal with Saren ourselves?"

Udina's frown grew even deeper. "As a Spectre, he's practically untouchable. We need to find some way to expose him."

"What about that C-Sec investigator?" Kaidan worked his omnitool quickly. "uh…Vakarian. Garrus Vakarian. We saw him arguing with the Executor."

"That's right," Ash agreed, "He was asking for more time to get some solid evidence. He acted like he was close to finding something on Saren; he only wanted the hearing _stalled_…"

Shepard asked, "Any idea where we could find him? "

Udina nodded, looking self-important. "I have a contact in C-Sec who could help us track this Garrus down. His name is Harkin."

"Harkin? Victor Harkin?" Anderson seemed surprised, then annoyed. "Forget it. They suspended Harkin last month. Drinking on the job. I won't waste my time on that loser."

"You won't have to." Udina folded his arms. "I don't want the Council using your past history with Saren as an excuse to ignore anything we turn up. Shepard will handle this."

Shepard glanced at his CO, then at Udina. "You can't just cut Captain Anderson out of the investigation. His ship, his crew was involved directly."

The Captain sighed. "No, the Ambassador's right, I need to step aside."

Udina turned to Shepard. "I need to take care of some business. Captain, meet me in my office later." He turned and walked off without another word.

"Who pissed in his corn flakes?" Ash folded her arms.

Anderson sighed. "Go easy on him. It's been hell at the embassy since word hit the extranet that Eden Prime was attacked. I saw a little of it, but we really should leave him alone for now." He turned to Shepard. "Harkin's probably getting drunk at Chora's Den. It's a dingy little club down in the lower section of the Presidium near the Wards."

Shepard glanced at a picture of Victor Harkin that his VI displayed on his ARO. "I thought you said he was a drunken loser."

"Couldn't hurt to go talk to him. Just be careful. I wouldn't call him reliable. He joined C-Sec about the same time I was working with Saren." Anderson looked away, almost lost in thought. "We used to hang out together. He was a top cop with alien experience, and a sterling record. But after he got into C-Sec, he started roughing up suspects in custody. There were bribery accusations, reports of drug use and even AI and bioweapon _sales_…" He shook his head. "I had to walk away."

Shepard's ARO had continued to display his VI analysis of Harkin. "Sounds like a scumbag," he mused, "Like he should have been cut loose long before now."

The Captain nodded. "The embassy used to step in when he got in trouble, because they didn't want their best-and-brightest being called a dirty cop. If the embassy hadn't been protecting him, he'd have been fired fifteen years ago. But it looks like his time's run out; we have enough humans in C-Sec now to stop protecting him." He shook his head, "C-Sec is better off without him."

"Is there any other way to get evidence against Saren?"

Anderson paused, looking up and left for a moment, then nodding to himself. "You should talk to Barla Von. Over in the financial district. Rumor has it he's an agent for the Shadow Broker."

"Shadow Broker?" Ash squinted. "What's that?"

"An information dealer. Buys and sells secrets to the highest bidder. Barla Von might have access to dirt on Saren…but his information won't come cheap."

Ash shook her head. "The hell it won't. We have the extranet. Who needs this guy?"

"He's a necessary evil, like the various intelligence groups. Buying and selling info is a part of the game, and the Shadow Broker just happens to be the best independent in the field. Doesn't get involved, or pick sides; only seems to be in it for the money. Not really a threat to anyone, at least not directly. He's just a resource we can use."

Shepard paused to think before looking up at Ash and Kaidan. "All right, then. Time is short. We should go."

Anderson nodded, "Good luck, Shepard. I'll be over in the Ambassador's Office if you need anything else." He turned and headed to the distant elevator.

"Thank you, sir. I'll keep you advised of our progress." Shepard continued to read the information his VI had gathered from the extranet about Victor Harkin.

"So, this is where the Council passes judgement on us _lesser species_," Ash said as she looked around.

Richard, eyes still following the Captain, tried to be positive. "I like the fountain."

Kaidan agreed. "It's very soothing." He turned to Shepard. "But what do we do next?"

Shepard held up two fingers. "We've got two leads. Williams, I suspect you'll have more appeal to a human than either of us, but that Chora's Den place sounds like trouble. Alenko, Jenkins, go with her; watch each other's backs. I'll go talk to this Barla Von guy. Whoever can locate this C-Sec officer first…Vakarian…call with the location, and we'll converge where he is." He turned and started toward the elevator.

"At least we get to go _down _a bunch of stairs now," Richard said to himself.

Ash nodded absently. "Hey, look at that. That guy is up to something."

Richard looked around. "What guy?"

"The one over by the Keeper. With his back to us."

Shepard's suit VI refocused the enhanced audio pickups in front of him. The salarian, kneeling next to a keeper, was waving his omnitool under it. He seemed to be speaking to someone by 'comm, "Hm…maybe. But not enough data yet. We need a few more scans and we'll know for sure." He paused, as if listening. "Because I want to know why it won't move on. It's just standing there. This could be important."

Shepard's quieted soles made hardly a sound as he walked up to the kneeling salarian. "I wonder if it knows what you're doing?"

The spindly alien leapt to his feet. "What? Oh no, I wasn't…uh…never mind." The salarian's omnitool, which had gone dark, illuminated; he worked on it intently before looking up again. "Um…yes. Is there something you want?"

"I thought you might be a Citadel technician. I was going to ask you about that…" Shepard gestured at the buglike alien casually; his ARO highlighted it and displayed the word **Keeper **on a callout. "Keeper. I don't recognize the species, and when I saw you there, I thought you might know something about them. Why are you so interested in the keepers?"

The salarian glanced quickly around the area. "Keepers? I have no interest in the –"

"Don't get coy," Ash interrupted, "I know what I saw."

The salarian looked around at the planters and walls. "I…fft. I'm not sure I should be talking to you about this."

Shepard looked around casually. "We're just talking. Is there something wrong with that?"

"No…I'm using a small scanner to try to take readings on them. So far, I've had mixed results. I find it difficult to get near the creatures with the station VIs being so protective of them."

Shepard nodded, "Yeah, we ran into that on the way up here. But why the interest?"

"Well, technically we're not supposed to disturb the creatures. I don't really think my scanning disturbs them, but the authorities might disagree. I'd like to do it more openly, but it's really not worth getting arrested over."

"They arrest people for that?"

Shepard's ARO finally presented the Social Intro data gathered by the VI:

**Vallane Chorban  
****Majority owner, BMI 3LS SymBion CMIT [Commerce Managed Independent Trimalask]  
****Off duty  
****Private mode**

Shepard asked, "What are you doing with the data once you've scanned it?"

"Trying to learn whatever I can about the keepers. We see them everywhere, and yet we know so little about them. I'm a scientist. I want to know what makes them tick."

Kaidan asked, "You mean they're not a Council species?"

"No," answered Chorban, "In fact for a long time, there was even question about whether they were organic, or just very complex biotech."

"They were here when the asari arrived?"

Chorban nodded. "Yes. We don't even know where they come from…somewhere deep inside the station arms, perhaps. They just seem to die and melt away to gelatinous goo when confronted or handled forcefully."

Shepard regarded the green keeper with suspicion. "That does sound like a WYDKTCHY problem." He turned to the salarian. "Is there some way I could help?"

Chorban took a step back. "Help?" He glanced at the other soldiers. "Are you serious? You will have to be careful. I don't want any of you getting in trouble and then blaming me. I don't even know who you are."

"I'm Commander Stephen Shepard of the Alliance, Executive Officer of the _Normandy_." He glanced at his omnitool. "I thought DisplaiD would tell you that."

Chorban glanced at his omnitool, cocked his head slightly. "As you say, WYDKTCHY. Fft…hmm. I didn't realize humans would understand the concept, let alone have a single word for it." He looked at the other soldiers again. "Will you all be scanning?"

Shepard shook his head. "I'm not speaking for them. I'm just offering for myself."

The salarian relaxed visibly. "Hm…I suppose I could use the help." He worked his omnitool, pinched an icon on it, and held it toward Shepard. "Here; you'll need this; it's my scanner applet. When you find a keeper, activate the app; it will tell you where and how to scan, and then upload the scan to my database."

Shepard reached out for the glowing icon, held it to his own omnitool.

Chorban continued, "This will help much; I thank you. I can spend more time compiling the data and figuring out what it means if you are scanning." He brightened suddenly. "As a way to encourage you, and even help direct your search, I will send a few credits your way with each unique scan."

**Applet offered by Vallane Chorban; Accept/Decline?**

Shepard accepted, the omnitool flashed green.

"I should get going then."

The salarian seemed excited to be off, "Yes…I have much work myself." He hesitated for almost a full second (an unusually long time for a salarian) before waving quickly to the group, "So long. And good luck with the scanning." They watched him walk quickly away.

"You really going to do that, sir?" Richard raised his own omnitool. "Or are you just setting him up?"

Shepard regarded the younger man. "It could be really big news if humans help discover something about the Citadel that the older races haven't. Or if it's something they're deliberately hiding." He activated the app and knelt next to the keeper.

"Sounds like conspiracy theory crap to me, sir," Ash said.

"I'll help dig up data if it pays," Richard parried.

"Looks like he hadn't finished scanning this one," Shepard pointed to his omnitool as it popped up a Payment Notification. "Ha. And he pays real money. I just got…" He goggled at the display. "Nine thousand credits?! That can't be for real…" He tapped the display, sent a VI off to check the amount, verify the fund source and legitimacy. It came back green almost instantly.

Kaidan leaned up close to Shepard's omnitool display. "_Nine thousand_? I wonder if he needs any more help?"

"Damn, for that kind of money, I'd skirt Citadel policy."

"Make sure you follow the Eleventh Commandment," Shepard warned.

Ash narrowed her eyes at him. "Huh?"

"Thou Shalt Not Get Caught." He waved an index finger at the display. "He's probably scanning up here because there are no Avina terminals, and thus, no monitoring by C-Sec. This might be trickier down in the Presidium."

"Still…are there any more up here?" Richard glanced around the Council Chambers. "If this is for real, let's get at it while we have time."

"Wait." Shepard held up a hand to shoulder height. "We don't have time, at least not a lot. Let's be efficient." He gestured as he directed, "Williams, Alenko, check those corners ahead. Jenkins, over there. I'll take the other side." He waved an index finger to his right ear. "Stay in touch. Meet back here if you don't find something. You've got thirty seconds. Go."

They scattered; with only thirty seconds, there wasn't a lot of time. Shepard didn't want to get distracted from their primary objective: Getting Saren recognized as a threat.

He walked briskly to his left, eyes roving the area as quickly as he could be thorough. "Found one," Kaidan said over the LOSI.

There was a pause as Shepard continued his walk to the shadowed foyer leading to smaller antechambers. "I got one over here," he said.

"Nothing here," Ash said, "Just a sitting area with a coin fountain."

There was a longer pause as Shepard approached the keeper slowly, looking around for cameras as he did. His ARO showed nothing.

Richard's voice interrupted his worrying. "Shucks. Nothing here…sir."

He lit the gauntlet, scrolled and selected the app. The scan finished almost instantly.

**Payment Notification: 9000 credits**

He shook his head again in disbelief. "Nine thousand."

Ash replied, "What the hell? This guy has _way_ more money than sense."

Shepard looked long and hard at the keeper next to him, noting that it was wearing a small white pack with an external antenna. "Or we don't know what we're dealing with. He may simply have more money _and_ sense than we do." He turned off his gauntlet and walked across the expansive landing to the opposite corner where Kaidan was standing on the side of the waiting area opposite the keeper.

Kaidan looked up as Shepard came into view. "Still, did you read his Social Intro? He's Third Level support in Brain-Machine Interfaces at that company. He might just be a well-paid genius with a pet project. We're doing the grunt work, but that frees him up to do the…" Kaidan shrugged, "You know…"

"Skull sweat?"

Kaidan smiled and nodded once. "Yeah. Like that."

Shepard approached and re-lit his gauntlet. True to Chorban's description, the interface gave some direction about where to hold and move the scanner, but it was neither difficult to do, nor time-consuming.

**Payment Notification: 9000 credits**

Shepard looked up from his omnitool at Kaidan, glanced at the keeper, and then at the omnitool again. He selected a payment option, spun an icon into place, and held it out to Kaidan. "Nice work; thanks for your help. Does this seem fair?"

**Payment Notification: 4000 credits**

"Are you serious?"

"As serious as Chorban. You helped; we were just in the right place at the right time." Shepard put two fingers to his ear, "Okay, team, we're out of here. Meet at the elevator."

As he and Kaidan walked to the Council Chambers entrance, they were joined by Ash and Richard.

Shepard turned first to his left…

**Payment Notification: 4000 credits**

Richard seemed baffled at the offering. "Sir?"

"You helped. I appreciate the efficiency you made possible, and I'm sharing what cost me practically nothing."

And then to his right.

"Damn," Ash agreed, "We should do this some more."

"We will," Shepard said as the elevator door closed, "But later. For now, we have to find a way to shut this Saren down, which means finding that turian C-Sec officer." His ARO prompted him with the name. "Garrus."

As it began its descent, the elevator popped out from behind its protective wall and showed them the Widow nebula again. Richard stepped up to the transparent material and seemed to lose himself in the view. "Gosh. I just love this."

"'Gosh!' 'Darn!' 'Heck!'" Ash teased, "Keep a civil tongue in your damned head, will ya?"

*** * * Glossary * * * **

blackbox: recording system used by police, public transportation, soldiers, and others to record their interactions. Similar to a flight recorder, which which it shares a popularized name.

CCC: Citadel Community Code

CGE: Computer-generated environment. A Virtual Reality environment for video production in which cameras can be placed, moved, and manipulated for shots that would otherwise be impossible, and also for production speeds of "faster than realtime" (if the promotional material is to be believed.)

LOSI: Line-Of-Sight Intersuit. A very short-range, laser-based battlefield intercom system almost impossible to intercept.

WYDKTCHY: What You Don't Know That Can Hurt You


	11. Chapter 11: Tali'Zorah nar Rayya

A/N – The 'canon' story "Homeworlds #2" reportedly tells what happened between the time Tali ambushed the geth (the one containing recorded conversation between Saren and Benezia talking about Eden Prime being a victory,) and stumbled her way into Dr. Michel's clinic. It spans several days, including a trip to Ilium with bureaucratic delays, stowing away to the Citadel, and jail time. This is a problem because in the game, from the time Shepard gets zapped by the beacon to _Normandy_'s arrival at the Citadel is little more than fifteen hours (according to Dr. Chakwas.)

Don't try to hand me any "time dilation" baloney...this is just old-fashioned bad continuity (read, "sloppy storytelling.") What we see happen in ME1 is difficult enough to make work. (Like the fact that Dr. Michel says that the quarian came in a couple of days earlier.) The only way any of this fits is if the Normandy docked at the Citadel and sat there for days before meeting with Udina.

This chapter is rated MA for some language and violence against the person. And since every chapter seems to be rated MA (and never lower,) I'm going to stop saying so. Anyone who's read this far and not been put off by it has nothing to fear from anything else that will follow.

***** Tali *****

The past few weeks had been interesting, but the past day had been chaos and several brushes with death.

Since leaving the flotilla, Tali'Zorah nar Rayya and Keenah'Breizh nar Iktomi had tracked hostile geth to a frozen outpost world, and managed to land while evading detection. But the stunt-like landing had damaged the ship.

While Keenah and the other quarians made repairs to the tiny 30-meter pocket starship – using soil for printer feedstock – Tali had led one of the geth patrols on a hurried chase away from it, and mugged one of them only to find she had overloaded a control system that would normally have destroyed the processing cores.

The "flat" system architecture used by the geth was a familiar one, and Tali seized upon the opportunity to download its contents, knowing that there was a backup to the security backup; the substrate was designed to be unstable if power was lost for several minutes. She was hunched over the inert geth when the feeds finally went dark. Feeling like she'd missed an opportunity, she sat back with a sigh and began to study the data she had managed to salvage. It wasn't as much as she had hoped for.

Looking forlornly at the exposed innards of the android, she realized the substrate had not in fact crumbled to dust. The cores, suspended in a borophene plasma, were still intact. More importantly, because the containment bubble was still intact, they were functional. The data may not have been important, but a functioning processor cluster was an amazing find.

The unit she had ambushed had apparently been one of several present during some kind of discussion with or between organics. This alone was startling; since driving the quarians from Rannoch, the geth were well known to be hostile to all organics. On her own, Tali would probably have mistaken the audio recordings for damaged data. But her neural interface allowed Tali to task her collection of specialized Virtual Intelligences with highly complex and intricate assignments as easily as she moved her own limbs.

So it was only because of her father's actions that one of her VIs – officially unapproved, but given to her by Rael'Zorah vas Rayya – noticed the sampling structure and rendered a low-bitrate excerpt of the extraordinary material. Without asking for approval to play it, the "willful" VI simply feed it straight to her suit's audio pickups.

Tali heard a voice say, "…the return of…"

She froze, looked around quickly, checked her sensor feeds. Nothing else was moving, no one else was near.

**Audio recording detected in quands 11259-35070. Unstripe / rebuild / delete?**

_**Father's crazy VI**_**, **Tali realized.

_Rebuild and playback, _she directed it.

While the VI worked, Tali continued her own meta-analysis. Five other VIs were searching for data about the geth themselves in what she'd recovered; how they had changed since taking Rannoch from the quarians. The chunks of data she was finding in the caches had been 'striped' across the geth memories. Normally this allowed for data reconstruction if at least 20% of the units were accessed, but Tali would have to locate the encryption hardware and hope it wasn't damaged.

She did find it. Not only was it damaged, it was thoroughly self-immolated.

Still, the data had been captured, and with the geth patrol misled, she returned to the _Honorata_ when the Captain called; they lifted ship and made for Ilium, Tali using the time _en route_ to process the data, asking her crewmates if they had any decryption algorithms that might help.

When the VI finished its processing, it recalled her reaction to its previous interruption, and popped open a window: **Audio recording rebuild complete. Contiguous 32 kBPS 22.5 kHz mono signal available for playback.**

Tali gestured the command to begin playback.

"Eden Prime was a major victory," said a voice. Tali picked out the dimodulation as obviously turian. "The beacon has brought us one step closer to finding the Conduit."

Another voice – more feminine, but sounding equally grim – said, "And one step closer to the return of the reapers."

It was not much to go on.

But during the hours it took to get to the mass relay, Tali had learned more from the geth's secondary controller. Originally a way for a damaged unit to have its actions analyzed upon recovery, the system had been modified by the geth after the war to function as a platform BIOS, allowing it to function even if severly damaged, until its individual system could be restored from backup.

The fundamental data it contained was apparently not considered important enough to provide with redundant self-destruct, but it was immensely informative to Tali. She discovered that there was something called "Nazara" that the geth regarded as an endstate they were pursuing…but so fantastically advanced as to be considerd godlike in its power. The syntax of the name (having no designator,) and the way the BIOS parsed it made it clear that it was not even unique; there were other 'reapers,' and someone named "Arterius-Spectre" was apparently in control of them.

A Council Spectre?

The situation was simply awe-inspiring…and terrifying. But Tali had no time to consider the implications, because by the time the _Honorata_ had jumped to Ilium, their landing permit had expired, and an official was claiming the landing site had been rented out to another ship. A turian identifying himself as a Port Authority Officer (and his credentials seemed to be in order) told them the ship they were on had been listed as stolen and they were all to be arrested as soon as they docked, and the _Honorata_ impounded.

He boarded the ship and started shooting, killing the Captain of the _Honorata_, her husband, and the navigator (who hadn't even been on his pilgrimage yet) before Keenah activated the fire alarm remotely, and Tali opened both airlock doors. The cabin was too small for the gun-waving turian to be blown out, but he stayed gaping and confused long enough for the suited quarians to kill him.

Contacting Ilium's Traffic Control again, they were politely asked if they needed to declare an emergency. Keenah suggested that, while the _Honorata _clearly belonged to the Second Officer, he and Tali should take the courier that the turian had boarded from – the transponder of which was now declaring it to be unregistered – and head for the Citadel. They could operate a shipping business and amass enormous pilgrimage gifts, maybe even have the courier as their own ship after fitting it out.

Tali had other plans for the information she had collected and analyzed. She was also uncertain that the ship was actually unregistered; its condition was too good for it to have been abandoned willingly.

When they arrived at the Citadel, the proper corporate owners tried to have them arrested for piracy, but the charge was reduced to stowaways and then not pressed because the ship's flight recorder validated their part of the story, and they had brought the ship back to its home port voluntarily.

Now shipless, they split up temporarily; Keenah went to get berths at a shelter, and Tali headed for the embassy to get help, or at least to find out what sort of resources there were. The turian clerk was dismissive and rude, saying it wasn't his job to just hand out money or ships or whatever, even calling her a "suit-rat" before threatening to call C-Sec if she didn't leave.

Not to be stopped so easily, Tali realized C-Sec might be able to help, and headed for a public area helpfully called the Commons. Shopping, housing, restaurants, banking, and most importantly a C-Sec office where she might be able to find an information broker who was in the market for information like she had about this Saren. Perhaps even Saren himself would pay to keep it quiet…if he didn't kill her first.

No…clearly this information would only benefit anyone if Tali sold it within the intelligence community before Saren got wind she had it. Having ventilated the agent of Saren's who could have told her that, she was taken entirely by surprise when a sniper put a round through her shoulder.

She collapsed on the stairs, sealed her suit sections around it, managed to get to an unfinished suite around the corner. **Coming soon**, read a hologram on the wall, **New C-Sec Storefront for Sector Nine**.

Noticing a subhall with two exits, she positioned herself where she could see everything from shadows, and waved her omnitool over the injury. While the analysis ran, she opened a medikit and began working on it. The single-use GrabIt (a gift from a favorite cousin) extracted the largest bullet fragments, which she set aside and pushed a thimble-sized dose of medi-gel into the wound, sealed it with tape, and closed the suit.

**Polonium ammunition. Seek professional medical aid immediately**, warned her VI.

Another VI located the nearest free public clinic, but it was in sector six. It would take her almost half an hour to get there, and her suit informed her that she was entering a state of shock, and there wasn't much more it could do to help.

Her suit had located the shooter, and warned her that three people – all humans, and all with their IDs off – seemed to be converging on her position. She made it to an elevator and had gone two levels short of the maximum that the elevator would let her go before she was beckoned into a duct by a human child who looked only a bit younger than herself. He pointed at her wound, and said, "You're bleeding. I can take you to a Humanist clinic; you can get help there."

"I'm quarian," Tali explained.

He rolled his eyes. "I know _that_," he said, "But _Doctor Michel_ is a Humanist…she helps everyone."

Tali tilted her head quizzically.

"For free," explained the dirty-faced youth. He held out his left hand, palm open. "See this?" He drew a line with his right index finger from the web of his thumb to the other side of the hand. "I fell out of the skycar maze so I wouldn't get hit by this one car – I couldn't hear him, right? – and I missed the stopper shelf. But I grabbed the edge of a vent fan. I thought I was _fucked_. But Moni found me in time, helped me back up. That's when it happened; on the way up, I didn't get my hand out of the way in time." He drew the line across his hand again vigorously, "_Whack!_ There was blood…_everywhere_. But Moni knew this doctor, Doctor Michel, who runs a little clinic right there. She always helps us kids out."

Another of Tali's VIs warned her that her temperature was rising. "Can you take me to her? I've been hit with radioactive ammunition, and it's toxic." She lit her omnitool to show him.

"Sure," he waved a hand casually, not bothering to look at her forearm, "But I didn't tell you the best part. Doctor Michel regrew my hand for me," he held it up again, flexed his fingers. "Good as new! So Moni started calling me the Salamander. I think it kind of weirded her out, but I like it." He backed away down the duct, "Come on, I'll take you there."

Tali nodded unconsciously as they traveled along the duct. Her vision was enhanced by infrared sensors, but she wasn't sure how he could see where he was going. "So where's Moni?"

"She got stuffed. Said it wasn't mine, but she had it aborted and Doctor Michel gave her a genetic mod to turn it off. Said she could get it turned back on later if she wanted." He paused as he continued to clamber ahead. "I thought we were going to be able to live on what she could make, but…she's been gone for...days."

**Caution: elevated circulatory rate increasing toxin propagation.**

Tali tried to keep a sense of perspective. "Then…wait. Stop for a minute." Ahead of her, the boy squirmed around to face her again with astonishing speed. "What is it?" His expression begged her to tell him where Moni was.

Tali reached into a webbed footbag. "I think you need this more than I do." She struggled to reach the trinket, but continued to talk as she did, "I got this from a human on Ilium. She told me she sensed I was going to find my soulmate, and she gave me this to give to him. Or, well...mmh…just a minute. Ah, there you are." She produced a gold coin about three centimeters across, held it up for him to see.

"She called it a 'living mizpah.' It's really just a one-bit entangled pair device. You can't communicate with it, but you can find each other. I'm sure you'll find her again, and when you do, break this along the jagged parting line, and each of you take a part of it. To find each other, just hold it in your thumb and fingers with the round edge forward. The edge will brighten where it's closest to the other half of the coin." She held it out to him. "But don't break it until you find her; the battery is not very big. As long as you both have your halves, you can always find each other."

The boy looked delighted. "Solid!" He looked at Tali, his eyes bright and optimistic. "I just know I'll find her again. This is great!"

Tali sighed, feeling nauseated and sleepy. This exchange had let her rest, lightened her load, encouraged this human child, and let Tali check to be sure she wasn't still being followed. She shook her head. "Ooh…this is getting bad. I really need help."

"Salamander" looked at her with renewed determination, nodded once. "Come on, I'll get you to Doctor Michel." He performed another one of his contortionist reversals, and shot down the duct. "She'll help you out, I just know it."

After another few minutes of crawling, they emerged in a high-speed skycar corridor. Salamander helped Tali up over the railing above them, and onto what looked like a viewing balcony. Tali barely noticed that the view of the station; right now, she was too concerned about her health.

"The clinic is just over here," the ragged boy said, turning to the right. He started off, and then glanced back to see Tali leaning on the railing. The climb had been wearying for her…and it shouldn't have been. Grabbing her waist, and putting her hand on his shoulder, he glanced up at her. "Come on," he said, "We're almost there!"

The last few meters was a struggle; Tali felt like – for only the second time in her life – she was going to throw up in her suit. The anti-nausea biostim apps were not keeping up. As she stumbled through the door, the medic – a red-haired human – practically ran over and caught her as she collapsed.

Looking up at her, Tali was barely able to speak through her own delirium. "On the whole, my pilgrimage is really not going well right now," she mumbled as she slipped into unconsciousness.

**# # #**

When she awakened, Doctor Chloe Michel was just walking over, studying a datapad. "Oh, good…you're waking up." Her accent was unknown to Tali, but the translator had no difficulty rendering a translation she could read. "You were lucky that young Timmy brought you in when he did." She inclined her head toward the human child, napping in the next bed. "He is a good boy. How do you feel?"

"Sleepy," Tali answered slowly. "Hungry."

"Do you feel any nausea or dizziness?"

Tali paused to check before answering, "Ah…no."

Doctor Michel nodded at her datapad. "That's a relief. I haven't treated many quarians, especially not for polonium poisoning. So I was unsure if the subjective readings were accurate on a quarian." She nodded decisively. "_I_ am Doctor Michel…and _you_ are welcome to rest here if you want. But who would want to shoot you? And why with polonium ammunition?"

"I don't know," Tali shook her head, "But I should try to find my friend from the _Honorata_. May I connect to your network? I'd like to text him." Tali knew what her answer would be, but she also knew that asking let others feel valued, which made interactions easier. Pilgrimage training (where she had learned this) could make the difference between returning successfully, and not returning at all.

The doctor lit her omnitool gauntlet and waved it past Tali, looking at the results. "Of course; the whole Citadel has PVR, so feel free." She waved the omnitool past Tali again. "Wait. Now that you're awake, I should ask; may I give you a toxinverter? That bullet must have had some really aggressive tech."

"You're the doctor; I'll take whatever you recommend…and thank you for it."

Doctor Michel adjusted her omnitool, "We really need to figure out who shot you; they might try again. Have you upset someone? Offended, maybe?"

"Only the geth I killed on that frozen world." Tali thought for a moment, approved the medicine that the doctor had just offered to her systems, then continued, "Then this turian pretended to be a port official on Ilium and killed the captain."

"Killed your captain? Where's your ship?"

"It's a long story. Only the Second Mate and a child survived, though, so it's their ship. It was just an old Roshlym-2." The doctor's blank look told Tali she had no idea what that was. "A pocket starship from fifty years ago. I think they said they got it from the asari whose mother had used it for adventuring. Keenah and I had taken the turian's ship and came here; apparently he had stolen it, so it was taken from us."

"Would _he_ want you dead?"

"The turian? He was probably just trying to steal a ship that wouldn't register as stolen—"

"No, the other quarian."

"Keenah?!" Tali was shocked; how it was that members of the same species could kill each other was baffling to her, but quarians especially understood the value of community, and even of each individual. There were relatively few quarians, so any life lost was a tragedy to their gene pool…if not to their civilization.

She sighed. "Certainly not. We're on our _pilgrimages_. Keenah was going to check out the nearest shelter and see if there was room for us." She gestured, sending off the text. "Though we should split up again soon. You don't want to get mated while you're on your pilgrimage…and he's not really my type…which is kind of what makes him a good pilgrimage cohort."

Doctor Michel shook her head. "I'm still worried about you. You don't know who shot you or why. But someone wanted you dead enough to use expensive ammunition…"

"I'll know if they come around again," Tali interrupted, "My suit identified three humans who were approaching after I was shot; it will tell me if they get within a half a kilometer. But I'm looking for a way to sell information to the Shadow Broker. It's about someone named Arterius."

"The Shadow Broker I know, and that probably means this will be dangerous. But Arterius? That sounds turian. Do you have a first name? Is he important?"

Tali looked at the image, shrugged. "I don't actually know. I have an audio recording of his voice, and some geth data that…um…" Tali turned quickly when the main entrance door hissed open. "Uh, maybe we should talk about this later."

"I'm sorry…I'll be right back." The doctor turned, stepped around the half-wall. "Hello, and welcome to the Medical Clinic. How can I help you?"

What had come through the door was – at first glance – a floating red crate. As the crate moved into the room, it was followed by a krogan, carrying it in one arm. He continued in, carrying a white one behind him. Setting them on the ground with gentle thumps suggesting they were quite heavy, he produced a digital tablet, which he extended toward the doctor. "I don't know how to set this up," he rumbled, "So don't ask."

Doctor Michel took the tablet, signed it, and handed it back. "No no, I will set it up later. Thank you very much."

The krogan took the tablet and left without another word.

Tali was still watching the door after it closed. "That was a krogan? I had no idea they were so large!"

The doctor nodded thoughtfully. "Yes, they certainly are."

Tali's sensors and VI had identified what was inside the crates, but a moment's reflection made he realize that saying so might reveal more than was wise. "What did you get?"

"A new set of automated beds and a scanner." Doctor Michel continued to inspect the boxes. "One of the clients I had a few days ago was grateful I was here to help, and this is how he's showing it." She turned quickly to Tali. "Ah! I know what to do. Fist. You should talk to Fist. He's not an information broker, but I know he's done work for the Shadow Broker, and can put you in touch with him. He can also protect you." She paused thoughtfully, then shrugged. "He will want a cut, of course."

"You can't do it?"

The doctor shook her head and smiled. "No, I prefer to keep my life simple where I can. Fist causes enough trouble for me, but I'm sure he can help you. You will have to go meet him at his club." She worked controls on her omnitool, pinched an icon and held it out to Tali. "This will get you there. It is very close; you can probably walk there in five minutes. I will call and tell him to expect you."

"I can just go there?"

"When you get there, go to the bar. Ask one of the servers to tell him you're there. He works out of his office, but if you just go barging in, you could find yourself staring down the barrel of a large gun."

"No, I mean I can just leave? I don't owe you something?"

The woman's face lit up as she smiled. "No, you don't owe me anything. I have enough income that I don't have to work, and I enjoy helping people who need it."

Tali thought quickly. "Well, you've probably saved my life, so I'd like to give you something…but I don't know what would do you the most good." She glanced at the crates. "You said this white box is a set of automated beds? Maybe I can help you set it up…I'm very good with technology."

"That would be helpful…I'm not sure I can move autobeds by myself." She pressed her thumb to a reader, and the top of the white crate sprang open as her omnitool chirped. She looked at it. "Oh…but Fist says he's there now and he'd like to meet you as soon as possible." She waved a hand toward the door. "You'd better go. But you can stop by again after you talk to him. I will look at the instructions while you're there."

Tali looked toward the boy "Salamander," still exhausted in the bed nearby.

"I'll tell him where you went," Doctor Michel added, "If you hurry, you might get back before he wakes up."

"Hm. Perhaps." Tali looked at the door once more, and then started toward it. "All right then, I'm going, but I'll be back to help _you_, Doctor."

It was about a ten minute walk to the club, and Tali was surprised at the things she saw even in that short span. The spectacular view of the Citadel, the simply enormous spaces with nobody in them, even the service corridor didn't have specialists living next to the equipment they tended. This station had to be unimaginably huge; even larger than it already seemed. Tali continued down a set of stairs to a transit station. She peeked into the door on her left and saw a collection of seller kiosks…small enough to remind her of home, but still far and away more spacious.

Moving to the other side of the transit station, she looked across an expanse through which cars raced with quiet speed at a neon silhouette of a stylized asari reclining on an abstract graphic. The image pulsed slowly.

_This may not be my kind of place_, she thought, _but I suppose I don't have to go back if I don't want to._

She loitered on the bridge, looking down at six vertical layers of skycar lanes, her head spinning at the volumes that would be required for this, the accelerations necessary to get the cars up to these speeds in the first place, the money spent on the cars…

But a human, exiting noisily from the door opposite reminded her of where she was. The man leaned awkwardly against the wall, pushed himself away from it to the halfwall, watched a few cars race by, shook his head, staggered along the walkway to the left. Tali waited for a few seconds for him to get back up before crossing over at the other bridge.

**Chora's Den**, read a locator as she stepped through the door. **A Coitophile's Club and Restaurant.**

The place was dark; her visor switched immediately to enhanced spectrum view, highlighting people with high-contrast outlines, identifying weapons, cameras, and other hazards with color-coded overlays. The music droned and thumped and groaned; it set her on edge.

She approached the bar; a salarian bartender looked up and pointed at her. "Here to see Fist?"

Tali nodded. "Yes...uh..."

The salarian waved to his right. "He's waiting for you. Go on in."

Tali followed his gesture to an opening in the wall; a short accessway ended in a door. It let into a ready room that could have easily accommodated four complete families. Instead, there was a set of lockers and a pair of humans playing an H2H game on their omnitools. Both of them looked up as Tali entered; her suit was getting identity info on neither of them.

Tali stopped. "Fist?" she said uncertainly, "I'm Tali'Zorah nar—"

One of the humans waved a thumb over his shoulder. "In there."

"Oh. Sorry." She walked past nervously, through a short airlock (_More likely a security checkpoint_, she thought,) and into an expansive office. _Admirals' staterooms are hardly this big_. _And they usually live with their families._

Two couches were on opposite sides of a stylish table with holographic inset. Beyond them, behind a desk, sat a man with close-cropped hair, who was focused on a DCE terminal. He looked up as she entered.

"Hey. Thanks for coming," he said, "I hear you have some intel to sell."

"Thanks…for inviting me," Tali said slowly, "Um…but I shouldn't really be talking to _you_, should I? I thought you were going to put me in touch with the Shadow Broker."

He rose from his seat, which caused the terminal to wink off. "Well, I am…but later. I have to know what kind of transaction I'm facilitating. I can't have you talk to him and all you have is a schedule for Transtellar, ya know?" He smiled broadly, ambling around the desk and gesturing to the couch. "Sit on down. Can I get you something to drink?"

**Accept drink, do not consume processed liquids**, advised a VI on Tali's visor. **Offer thanks**_._

"Water would be nice," she said, "Thank you." She perched nervously on the edge of the nearer couch, close to the door.

He reached for a panel on the wall to his left, which rose at his touch to display an assortment of liquor bottles of real glass. "Water, huh? I suppose our liquor might kill you?" He shook his head as he filled a glass with water from a dispenser. "That's tough." He mixed himself a drink of some kind.

"Well, it's not likely, but it's possible. Water is something we have in common, though."

As he brought both glasses to the table, he looked at her closely, the usual _I-wonder-if-I-can-see-into-your-mask_ sort of squint. "This is distilled water. Uh…you want a straw or something?"

"No, that's all right; I have an appliance for water ingestion." She tapped a part of her suit near her shoulder as Fist sat down, placing the water on the table near her. "So what do we do next?"

He sipped from his glass, smiled easily. "What's your hurry?"

"I've been shot already today," Tali turned to show her left shoulder; the slowly-oscillating shimmer of picoforges showed the suit had begun repairing itself, but the damage was obvious.

"Hey, if they don't do that, you haven't got their attention." He glanced at her shoulder, seemed to become fractionally more serious for a moment. "Good for you. Your info is important enough to kill for, but you're tough and lucky enough not to have been killed. So tell me about this intel you have, and why you're in such a hurry to liquidate it."

"It's about the geth. I have information that shows…someone…has control over them."

"And this is valuable because…?"

Tali recoiled. "Because they kicked us off our homeworld. And now they have had three hundred years to build up massive fleets and manufacture more troops. If this Arterius person really does control them, it's…bad! For _everyone_!"

Fist looked surprised, and then chuckled. "I'm not blowing you off. I'm just trying to find out who might feel threatened by this intel, and that's pretty obviously who it would be." He took another sip from his glass, and then put the drink on the table. "How did he…or _anyone_…find out you had it?"

She glanced down at her shoulder. "I wish I knew."

"Maybe you should start at the beginning. How did you even find this…whatever you have. Wait a minute. What do you actually have?"

"An audio file with voiceprint, and an intact geth BIOS mirror core naming Arterius-Spectre as root user."

Fist scrunched his lips in thought. "_Saren_ Arterius? Could the recording be a fake?"

Tali looked at him incredulously. "They would need to have synthesized every nuance of the recording to sound like it was recorded live. There's no reason for them to do that." Tali paused in thought. "Unless they're trying to throw us off the track. But there would be more effective and less difficult ways to do that."

"Do you think Saren might have sent the geth to your homeworld?"

Tali goggled at him. "No." She leaned forward, peering at him closely. "_We_ built them. Do you even know the story of the geth?"

"Uh…no. Oh, wait...it was centuries ago, wasn't it? Forget about it. I only need to know what happened to _you_. How did you get this file?"

Tali explained that she had only recently started on her pilgrimage. She'd landed on Ilium as part of a group of four pilgims, sponsored by IndentuTech, a company that tested them over the duration of the three-hour flight and then made offers to Tali and one of the others of a one-year contract with berth and board that would end with them getting some money, an F-6 entry card for Ilium and several other asari worlds, and "real-world experience" they could show to a company that might hire them.

In spite of having been warned by their Pilgrimage mentor that there were better companies to work through, the other quarian took the offer. Perhaps because he felt passed over, the one who had not been offered a position asked for a contract and – to everyone's surprise – was offered an R+M EVA contract aboard one of Ilium's high-orbit stations. He took it.

While bartering weapon and suit upgrades in a virtualized market, Tali and Keenah had located a small extended family operating a tiny starship and planning to "go adventuring" on a geth outpost world. It was potentially dangerous trip with unknown technology challenges, and so they had been looking for a tech specialist like Tali to be part of the crew.

The pilot and navigator were both proficient in a variety of weapons and relatively new battlefield technologies, and they had the hardware to back it up. The rest of the crew included the pilot's father (a former marine) and sister (a biologist with actual planetary experience and a fondness for incendiary weapons,) and the navigator's brother (who had not yet made his pilgrimage.)

When they offered her 18.4% of the net, Tali thought it was a great opportunity; at the very least, it would provide bed and board for the duration of the "adventure."

Living in the aftermath of the geth war, during which the quarians' own AGIs had rebelled against them, the quarians as a people were painfully aware that their failure to fully understanding their own technology had cost them their homeworld. Tali's father seemed obsessed with the fact that they now lived tightly aboard starships rather than on a planetary surface, and devoted his life and practically all his spare time to research into "the geth problem."

As a by-product of this, Tali had grown up simply awash in technology, from software interactions with bloodstream computing to the long-term materials stresses of mass effect field usage. The opportunity to actually do something, to make a difference for everyone on the flotilla…and her father…was too attractive to pass up.

In order to remain undetected, their landing involved a near-suicidal unpowered drop from orbit followed by a low-altitude, very hurried restart of the engines. The damage was not extensive, but it was crippling until it could be repaired, and the geth had sent out a single flyer to investigate the mass that had landed without registering on their seismometers. Their landing was as far from any geth installation as they could manage.

The vas Honorata family knew more about their own ship than Tali and Keenah could have, but Keenah was injured during the landing. While they made repairs, Tali raced away from the ship on foot, careful to make her departure noticeable but not obvious…and to make it look like she had a destination in mind.

It worked; the flyer set down about a kilometer ahead of Tali, releasing a squadron of geth androids into her path. As they chased each other over snow-and-ice-covered formations, one of the units lagged back, probably in an attempt to foil her misdirection, and any double-back that she might attempt.

Had she not already done so, it would have been trouble. But because she had, the geth was doomed. She spiked it with an overload at 30 meters, and then attempted something new that her father had shown her just before she left: To hack the geth's own internal command hierarchy and set it against the other geth.

It didn't work, but the timing of the overload damage and the hacking did prevent the geth from frying its own memory cores. The android simply collapsed.

Tali's eyes widened; this was the opportunity of a lifetime. She worked as fast as she could, hoping the other geth would take long enough to get back that she could finish the job.

She stopped in the middle of her tale and sighed. "I didn't know what I'd found until Keenah and I were aboard the little courier ship. It took that long for my VIs to analyze." She shook her head sadly. "I have to admit I actually considered not telling them what I'd found. By the time I could have, they were dead or gone."

Fist shrugged. "Hey, at least you don't have to get the deal approved by a bunch of other people. Besides, you risked your life to get it. The rest of them just waited at the ship." He waved a finger at a few of her pockets. "Okay, so do you have it? Can I see it?"

Tali was about to become indignant, answering that _without their ship, she never could have gotten there, and three of them were now dead_…but her VI advised silence. She sighed, produced a tiny, clear box from a pocket and held it up for him to see the borophene panel inside. "This is the core. I have as much of its data as I could get before it stingered itself."

Fist squinted at the silvery-magenta crystalline flake.

Tali replaced it in her pocket. "It's actually about thirty or fourty cores, but what makes it interesting is that the one interlaced core cluster that's still intact is not only readable, but it contains a segment of a known datastream."

Tali lit her omnitool by BMI and continued, "I have that datastream, or most of it, and it could be used – with the right equipment – to decode this entire structure at an atomic level. Once that's been done, any geth core, fried or not, could be decoded. Well, mostly. At least 60%, and probably 80%, depending." She paused, studying his reaction.

Fist wasn't acting like he understood…at the very least, he did not seem to be impressed.

"This has the potential to let us read every single piece of information that we've been unable to access on geth platforms that have been salvaged. All the geth fragments in museums, in intelligence labs, or captured in the future…we could now read them!"

Tali's VI offered analogies that she could use to help him understand. "To your people, this is like…the Nazi Enigma device. Or the Rosetta Stone. I've just _got to_ take it back to the Flotilla, but before I do, I wanted to try to sell this information to the Council. I've heard about the geth attack, and if they're going to fight the geth, they'll need this. It could be worth a lot to the intelligence services of every Council race…and even to humans, since they attacked you first.

"But because it contains information pointing to that Arterius-Spectre, I think he's the one who tried to kill me. His voice is recorded here, and probably other identifying information, but there's seventy or eighty petabytes of data; I haven't finished processing it by myself, it's too much with just my suit's DCE."

"So how did Saren find out you had it?"

Tali stopped, tilted her head down slightly in thought. "I don't know. But if he has root privileges to the geth, anything the geth know, he could find out." She looked up. "That would explain why they tried to kill us at Ilium. He knew, and sent one of his henchmen…"

"But how did he know you were going to Ilium?"

The quarian paused for a long time. "The geth had a transponder?" She shook her head. "No, it was dark. I wouldn't have brought active geth aboard the _Honorata_."

"Maybe it was dark for a while, and then reactivated?"

Tali thought about the remains of the geth they had tossed overboard from orbit. She did not want to consider that she might have overlooked a functioning system, and so she didn't. "Well it can't hurt anyone now. I think the _Council _will be most interested in it, but so far, they've only seen fit to call me a suit-rat, so now I'm going to make them pay dearly for it. The only way I know to do that is to sell it through an infobroker. And this is too important… so I must contact the Shadow Broker. I know you're going to get a cut, and I know that the Shadow Broker will, too. But I need to fund my pilgrimage, and I need to get this data to the Shadow Broker to do that."

Fist pursed his lips, "Hmm…okay. I'll admit you've really done your homework on this; let me see what I can do." He glanced toward the door. "Go help yourself to a drink or a meal or whatever; I'll tell 'em it's on me."

Tali was startled at the gesture. It was typical of being invited into someone's home…on the Flotilla. So she was not expecting it from a human. "Oh…really? Ah…thanks. That's very nice of you, Mister Fist."

He snorted a laugh. "Not 'Mister Fist,' just 'Fist.'" He held up a large meaty hand, clenched it, pantomimed a right cross. "Bam! Fist of Justice. Fist of Fury. But always a fist." He grinned confidently at her.

"Oh…sorry about that. Um…Fist." She twiddled fingers nervously. "I saw you had a ready room just outside. Would it be okay if I just waited there? I'm not eager to be seen again too soon, and the two guys you had in there looked like they could help if—"

"_Two _guys?" Fist was on his feet immediately. "If those idiots are playing their stupid game again, I'll brain 'em both." He stomped through the security lock and into the ready room.

The table and chairs were empty.

Tali came up behind him slowly. "Uh…maybe they left after I came thro—"

Fist had two fingers to his ear. "Jonus, Ravi. Where are you?" He listened, seemed to be relieved. "Okay, good. Stay alert. I've got a hot item in here and I don't know if there's a tail. Watch for bad guys." He looked at Tali, and like most aliens, he looked at the speech-responsive bioport on her mask, then tried to look up to where he thought her eyes would be. "You're safe here…but you're welcome to stay in the ready room if you prefer. I could have something brought to you if you're hungry."

Tali's resistance finally broke. "I am actually quite hungry, and I saw a couple of turians in there," she pointed out to the main floor. "I assume you have a dextro menu?"

Fist nodded, "Sure…on the Citadel, you bet we do. The menu's on the DCE. Order up whatever you want…_I_ can't eat it." He shrugged as he grinned. "I'll contact my favorite broker; wait here." He stepped back into his office.

***** Glossary *****

BMI: Brain-Machine Interface

BIOS: Basic Input-Output System

DCE: Distributed Computing Environment

H2H: Head to Head; a style of game played between two players, usually within arm's reach of each other.

picoforge: Molecule-sized, high-resolution thermal manipulator cells capable of annealing, cauterizing, sintering, and other catalytic reactions. Recommended fuel is carbon. Typically a component of exosuit systems.

PVR: Polyphase Virtual Reality. An immersive VR technology that stimulates multiple regions of the brain, allowing for a nearly complete reproduction of environments or experiences. Because it is a demanding, high-bandwidth technology, it became a measure of network capability, particularly among users who depend upon it.

toxinverter: a medical protein-refolding technology that targets very specific toxins and neutralizes them by inverting their structure, neutralizing their effects and configuring them to be flushed from the body.

Transtellar: a commercial spaceline operator


	12. Chapter 12: Fist

***** Fist *****

Fist closed the inner security door to his office, opened another wall panel and removed a large box with both hands, turned and put it down on his desk. Sitting and facing it, he activated the exotic communicator and spoke: "This is Agent Fist." He rolled a Spanish "R" with his tongue, adding a series of tones to it that was his password.

"Hey…it's Fist. I have a source with evidence…uh, the contents of a geth memory core…implicating Saren in the geth attack on Eden Prime. The only Saren I know is that Spectre Saren Arterius. The source is a quarian. I don't have the file in my possession yet. She's trying to sell a copy of the info only. If you're interested in this info, let me know. Fist out."

He pushed the box to one side and sat back in his chair, folding his arms across his chest.

_Saren…Saren Arterius?_ He shook his head. He'd seen the Spectre on his security cameras a couple of times; …_wait, that's crazy...a Council Spectre wouldn't be involved in that attack on a human colony._

…_would he?_

He squinted in thought.

_I wonder if Saren would pay for this?_

He pulled his small standalone computer toward him.

**A quarian is trying to sell info tying you to the Eden Prime attack. You want the info, the quarian, both, something else? Send instruction and an offer.**

**Encrypt, kiew-key 11259375. Xmit.** He wiped his thumb past an old-style biometric reader. The computer chittered and warbled to itself, and displayed **Sent**.

Before he could rise from his chair, the stellarcom device lit up again: **Incoming message**. The holographic display winked on; the connection was realtime.

The Shadow Broker asked, **Is the geth memory core in her possession?**

Fist pondered his answer, tried to be wiley, "I think so, but haven't seen it."

**You have a budget up to GCr 3,000,000 for the core plus copy of core dump, fee at your discretion. Reply when you have it.**

Fist gawked at the figure. _Three million?! _He grinned, leaning back in his chair. _Guess who finally made the Big Time._ He sprang from his chair and stopped himself before walking deliberately through the security doors.

The quarian was sitting at the table, chopping up something on a plate before her and pushing the finely-shredded bits through a filtered chowlock. She was looking up as Fist stepped through the outer door and into the ready room.

Fist smiled reassuringly. "You must have quite the item there; he's offering one million credits for a copy of the info plus the intact core."

Tali was slightly embarrassed to be eating in front of an alien. "That…was fast," she stammered, "I guess your broker just happened to be sitting at his desk?"

Fist nodded. "Uh-huh. It's actually pretty impressive. It may just be one guy with some well-coded VIs that run interference for him on the comms. But yeah…he answered immediately. Almost always does. And a million credits is _pretty interested_."

"Wait…he wants the _cores_?" Tali put a hand to her hip pocket, double-checking that the fragment was still there. "But this is valuable…_very_ valuable to my people. We can use it to understand the geth, and maybe even stop them. We've been looking for something like this for _centuries_!" She paused, reading the analysis presented by her father's unpredictable VI. "How much would he take for just the info? I can't just…I won't let someone else keep the cores. They're just too valuable to my people."

Fist looked away. "Well…" He scratched his head. "I don't know. Let me go check. Maybe I can work something out."

Feeling unusually generous, he turned around and exited the ready room, scratching his chin nervously.

With the doors closed behind him, Fist sat on the edge of the couch, looking around the room in thought. "So," he mused aloud, "How much would you offer for just the info?"

"Oh, not as much," he growled in response, pretending to be the voice he'd heard only once before. "Maybe a quarter of a million. The cores are very important to me, too."

He squeezed his eyes shut and rubbed the bridge of his nose. _Shit,_ _I should have gone straight to Saren_, he thought.

**# # #**

Benezia's eyes reflected the _Invicta_'s smallish cabin.

She regarded the strangely organic device protruding through the aft bulkhead with renewed suspicion. Running the length of the ship like a spine, the "integration" gave the impression it was growing, but she could not examine it too closely without arousing suspicion of her own suspicions. Its veined cables, connecting it to modified navigational display, life support, engineering…it seemed like a highly advanced form of automation in function, but it was too obvious, as if its visibility were part of its function as well. Since installing it, the fly-by-wire ship had become less balky than the batarian yachts she had worked on in her youth before the rise of the Hegemony…but it still made her uncomfortable.

Saren gestured to the comm system, ending the telepresence call to the Council, and sat in the chair behind him. "Shepard," he growled. "_Shepard _is the one who saw the beacon's message."

As she nodded, Benezia's eyes settled on the navigational display, followed the path the ship would feed to the Relay Transit Tracking buoys. Sovereign had provided the enormous "integration" device, told Saren how and where to use it, and given terse instructions for the timing of its activation. It might make her uncomfortable, but she could not deny that it was a powerful…even _indispensable_ tool: it could leave information of any sort in the relay network, from erasing a transit where there had been one, to recording a transit where there had been none.

Benezia looked away from the Musky's navigation console and rotated the alien chair toward Saren. "Perhaps the way to keep him ignorant of its importance is to ignore _him_. Killing him could call too much attention to our search for the Conduit. We should not risk undue attention."

Saren leaned on the console, massaging his forescalp with a taloned claw, "But his knowledge of the beacon message must be destroyed. It points to the Conduit, it warns of the reapers, it shows other things even I do not yet understand."

"It will be too hard to kill him on the Citadel."

Saren growled, and lapsed into silence. After a pause, "It is unimportant that _**I**_ kill him," Saren thought aloud, "What operatives do we have there now?"

Benezia knew their names without consulting her VI, "Dellit Fask and the two Vizs brothers. Prant, Jeripomandua Hinq, and Bad Strongest have all been used too recently. Timiny is posted to the Presidium, but I consider her unreliable. Not enough to end the contract, but not for this." Her ARO displayed a translucent pop-up, **Incoming call: Fist – Encrypted – key applied successfully.**

Benezia pursed her lips. "Hm. And there is a message from Fist."

"Fist." Saren read the terse message, contracting what was left of his fringe in thought.

**A quarian is trying to sell info tying you to the Eden Prime attack. You want the info, the quarian, both, something else? Send instruction and an offer.**

Noting the time of transmission, Saren growled with annoyance, then gestured to the display on their left. "Live message to Fist," he said.

**Connecting, please wait.**

_Fist_ – an absurd name the human had chosen for himself – appeared with his usual doltish smirk.

Saren turned to the display as it lit. "Fist. I'm surprised. I had contracted with a freelancer to kill the quarian; I…_appreciate_ that you were more subtle."

"Saren." Fist nodded once. "Yeah, I thought you might be interested; she's naming names."

"Do you have her there?"

"Yeah, she's in the armory. Someone tried to kill her…oh. That was probably your _amateur_."

"Kill her. Now."

Fist goggled at the computer. "You don't want the intel? The geth core?"

"If I did, I'd have asked for it. I only want her dead, _human_."

"She's _in my club_. I can't do that here; C-Sec will shut me down."

"It's just a quarian; C-Sec will never know. I know about your Maw access, and I don't care where you do it. Just kill it and get the omnitool to me."

"Well, here's the problem: There's another buyer. He wants the data _and_ the quarian, and he's sending a krogan to pick her up. Alive."

Saren fixed him with a look he'd never seen before. "What's the offer?"

"It's the Shadow Broker. He's offering six million," Fist answered evenly. "Well, if she's still breathing."

"What would you say to twelve million for the quarian's omnitool?"

"A quarian without an omnitool? That'll never happen, not even for the whole twelve million. You might as well try to buy her brain."

"It would if it were dead."

"You don't…" Fist scowled, shook his head. "No. No, this is for the _Shadow Broker_. Are you crazy...or do you think _I_ am? I could never get within twelve million light years of civilization for the rest of my life!"

Saren didn't react. "I'm transferring ten million to your Tunguska account now, and another fifteen million when you hand over the quarian's omnitool."

Fist squinted at the display. His omnitool informed him he had indeed received the funds.

Saren looked up at the camera again. "Kill that quarian and get me her omnitool to prove it."

There was a long pause, as Fist stared at the display on his omnitool.

"What's the gimmick?" Fist asked. "You've never been this…intense."

"Fist! End that quarian now! I could kill _you_ if I wanted, or worse, _ruin_ you. But I want you to be motivated to _succeed_. This is too important to too many people. Do it now. Now!"

Saren hammered the cutoff.

**# # #**

Fist recoiled from the suddenly dark display. He frowned, glanced up toward the door leading to the ready room, and then sighed, shaking his head. He thumbed the reader on the stellarcom; the device lit in response.

The Shadow Broker's device beeped and lit its text interface, **Buy now. Intact cores are not negotiable. I want the quarian. If alive at delivery, there will be a million credit bonus.**

"Turns out she doesn't have the cores," Fist said to the device, "And…never mind that, there's another complication."

**Not your concern. Keep her safe. Sending an agent to pick her up. A krogan will be at your club in the next hour. ID: Urdnot, Wrex**

"Not so fast. I'm not sure you have the best deal."

Silence.

Fist leaned closer to the device, wondering if it had malfunctioned.

**You have just received an occulted payment of ten million credits. Explain.**

"I'm a free agent," Fist answered. "And I'm choosing who I sell to."

**Not an option**, came the reply. **We have a deal.**

Fist stood, lifting the communicator. "No," he said to it as he placed it in the corner of his office. "We do not."

He drew a tiny, silenced pistol from his back pocket and fired it repeatedly; the machine sparked once and went dark. Fist picked the smoking box up with a single hand, and opened the other door.

Stepping through, he looked to his right at the sliver of starlight he could see, leaned over the edge of the balcony and tossed the remains of the stellarcom over the trailing edge. He stood, watching it for a few seconds as it soared along a collection channel toward the recycler Maw. It was at least a kilometer off, but anything that fell away from this surface of the station ended up in the Maw.

_The view isn't the greatest_, he thought, _but it's sure handy._

At last, he put two fingers to his ear. "Okay, _Everybody_. The bad news is I just blew off the Shadow Broker. The good news is we just made four point seven million credits. Anyone left standing after the shooting stops gets an _even share_. Trug, Skaven, guard the ready room. Sticky, give 'em a heads up if you see a big krogan come in."

"Is there any other kind?" Though he was being belligerent, the salarian still sounded nervous.

"I mean big, even for a krogan. All right, this is for the big money. Get plenty of ammo. I'm gonna go seal the deal."

**# # #**

The krogan bouncer didn't turn his head as they stepped through the unmarked door, but Kaidan and Ash both knew they had been noticed.

Kaidan's omnitool picked out **Victor Harkin** and put a callout over him on his ARO. When he spotted a table nearby, he turned to Ash and started to speak, but the deafening noise – suggestive music that seemed typical of a dimly lit "club" with exotic dancers – made him reconsider. He gestured for RTM, subvocalizing, **He's near that exit to the toilets. There's a table just the other side. I'm going to go get the table, you go get us a couple of drinks and walk past him. Maybe you can talk to him.**

Ash messaged back, **Ew, ick…but...well, you're the top. What do you drink?**

**Just get a couple of beers or something. Soon as we got info out of this Harkin, we're done with them.**

**Really? You'd abandon a beer?**

**In a place like this, it's probably just isopropyl and food coloring anyway. But you can use it to get his attention.**

Stopping at the kiosk around the back of the central bar, Ash ordered two of the club's private label beers, lifted one in each hand and headed to the table where Kaidan was seated, going anti-clockwise around the central bar station so she would be able to go past Harkin's table.

**How come I get the dirty job?**

**Because I doubt he'd think I'm his type,** came Kaidan's ready reply.

She noticed the man staring at her almost immediately. A lecherous grin formed slowly on his stubbled face. "Well stick a pole up my ass and call me a turian. If more marine babes looked like that, I'd have joined the Alliance instead of C-Sec."

Ash slowed, almost unable to believe he'd said it aloud.

Noticing that the woman had not only heard him, but was now intently looking his way, Harkin continued, "Hey there, sweetheart...ya looking for some fun? 'Cause I gotta say, that soldier getup looks _reeeal good_ on that bod of yours. Why don't you sit your sweet little ass down beside old Harkin? Have a drink and we'll see where this goes." He chuckled to himself, pushed a chair out from the table with his foot.

Ash considered flinging one of the beers at him as a text appeared on her ARO. **Play hard to get**, Kaidan suggested, **I'll Lift him on the way out if you want**.

"Why you fff…" She stopped herself, then continued, "You look just like the fellow that Ambassador Udina said to ask where we can find Officer Garrus Vakarian." She paused, found herself unable to resist putting the bottom-feeder in his place. "As for your…_charming_ offer, I'd rather drink a cup of acid after chewin' on a razor blade."

"You trying to hurt my feelings? You gotta do better than that. After twenty years in C-Sec, I've been called every name in the book, princess."

Ash leaned up close to him, and lowered her voice, "Call me princess again and you'll be picking your teeth out of the wall behind you."

Harkin seemed to read from his ARO. "_Normandy_?" He looked up at Ash again, "Heh! You must be one of Anderson's crew. Poor bastard's still trying to bring Saren down." He grinned confidently. "I know where Garrus is, but you gotta tell me something first. Did ol' Davey let you in on his big secret?"

"Just tell me where Garrus is before this gets really ugly."

Harkin raised his hands imploringly, "But it's all related, don't you see? Your Captain used to be a Spectre. Didn't know _that_, did ya? It was all very hush-hush. The first human ever given that honor. And then he _blew_ it. Screwed his mission up so bad they kicked him out. Of course, he blames Saren. Says the turian set him up."

Ash was unimpressed. "Why should I believe a drunk like you?"

Harkin shrugged, "Fine, ask him yourself. I bet he tells you. He's too stupid and proud to lie right to your face."

"You said they covered this all up. How'd you hear about it?"

Harkin cackled, leaning his chair back, and grinned again. "I spent twenty years working cases here on the Citadel. People on this station _looove_ to talk." He leered at her. "Secrets are like herpes. If you got 'em, you might as well _ssshhpread_ 'em around."

Ash paused, mouth open in disbelief, then carefully set the beers down on Harkin's table. In a single motion, she pulled the other chair away from the table and sat down, drawing her sidearm and aiming it at him under the table. The pistol's electronics whined softly as it decompacted and armed itself. "One more chance, buster. You tell me where Garrus is right now. Or you'll be tweetin' like a bird for the rest of your unnatural life."

Harkin reacted with as much life as she'd seen yet; he backed the chair against the wall and put his hands up defensively. "_Okay!_ Jesus, settle down, babe." He rendered an omnitool gauntlet that somehow managed to look dingy and abused, and waved commands at it. "Vakarian…Garrusss…" he muttered to himself as he flipped through the C-Sec blotter interface. "There he is. _En route: Shots Fired near Apollo's Café_," he read from the omnitool. Looking up, he sniffed, wiped his nose with his wrist. "So how about it? Is that at least good for a little kiss?" He grinned unsteadily.

"Mmmm…" Ash looked up and left, appearing to consider the idea as she stood up. "Not today, sport…but it's good for a _beer_." She reached for the glasses, lifting one with her left hand and tapping the other with the muzzle of her pistol. The glass tipped over, spilling its contents across the table and toward him.

In his drunken state, Harkin couldn't dodge the liquid; the chair simply fell backwards, throwing him to the floor. Beer drizzled from the table to the floor next to him as he struggled to his feet.

"Thank you for your assistance, officer," Ash said as she turned away.

"Yeah, good. Go…let me drink in peace." He looked at his hands, then at his clothes. "Shit. What did I ever do to you...?"

Ash stepped over to the table where Kaidan was sitting and placed the beer between them. "Obnoxious pig," she glared toward Harkin one last time.

"Looked like he gave you some info, though."

Ash raised her left arm and lit her gauntlet. "I got a finder for the C-Sec officer. Harkin said he was responding to a Shots Fired call at Apollo's Café."

"Good. That takes some of the pressure off. Now we can find him no matter where he goes."

Ash shrugged. "It'd probably be better to get to him quickly. If we wait too long, we might lose whatever leads he had."

"True. Though we ought to give Rich a minute to catch up." Kaidan glanced at Harkin, and then back up at Ash. "Expert use of that sidearm, Chief."

Sitting, she looked down at the weapon, then glanced thoughtfully to her right. Cleanerbots scurried around the drunk, transtating the liquid into a dust, and then quickly vacuuming it up. It was a low-tech solution, but it worked well in public places. She looked up at Kaidan. "I'll have you know that _this_," she waved the pistol slightly, "was issued to me by mistake. This is a _magic _gun."

Kaidan turned his head slightly, squinting at her. "How do you figure?"

"Back when I took the training for, and served as an MP at Hadley...the Alliance base on Acheron..."

"Where?"

"Acheron. One of those really distant colonies that fizzled. Back before Colonial admin figured out about corporate sponsorships. Anyway, it turns out that _this gun right here_ is also a magic translator. There had been an aborted Blood Pack hit on the colony, and I inquired of a batarian if he had seen any of their vehicles in the past few minutes, and which way it had gone. At first, he just babbled his gargle-and-spit language at me, until I drilled _this_ into his cauliflower ear. And then suddenly I was able to understand _everything he was saying_." She nodded confidently and pointed at her weapon again. "_Magic gun._"

Kaidan nodded admiringly. "You really do know how to use that thing."

Ash holstered the Stiletto-VI as a krogan stepped into the club.

Like most of his species, he looked something like a bowling pin, heavy end up. Because of this, when he walked, he seemed to waddle. Had he not been carrying a custom shotgun the size of a bazooka, it might have elicited a grin.

But this was a large krogan, easily 400 kilos. While his armor looked expensive, it also looked well-worn, even abused. Panels had been replaced, but scorch marks remained on the adjacent pieces where it looked like he'd taken direct missile fire. He seemed to wear the claw scrapes, acid burns, and bullet marks like medals.

As the krogan waded deliberately between the tables, Ash noticed how patrons and staff managed to subtly get out of his way while pretending nothing unusual. Just before he reached the drunk's table, two other krogan blocked his way at the entrance to the restrooms. Their jungle camouflage armor looked lighter, newer, and subtly – if comically – inadequate.

The large krogan stopped, turning slightly so he could see one guard with each eye. "I'm here to pick up a quarian," he rumbled.

"There's no quarian to pick up," one of them answered.

"There'd better be, or it could get…_unpleasant_ here."

"Back off Wrex," snapped the other, "Fist told us to take you down if you showed up."

"What are you waiting for? I'm standing _right here_."

"Trying to save your fossilized hump," said the first. "_There's no quarian._ Now go away, you're making the dancers nervous."

Wrex postured a head-butt, but did not deliver it. "This is Fists's only chance. If he's smart, he'll take it."

"He's _not_ coming out, Wrex. End of story."

The krogan sniffed with antipathy, and turned away. "This story is just beginning."

Richard had his eyes on the dancers as he approached the table, and took a step back after bumping into a wall of deep red armor.

The krogan looked down at him indifferently, realized this was not a ritual challenge, and said, "Out of my way, human. I have no quarrel with you."

Richard quickly stepped between two tables to his left, and the krogan continued past. He kept watching the krogan's exit as he arrived at Ash and Kaidan's table, "What was that all about?"

Ash shook her head, "Who knows? Let's just try not to get involved."

Kaidan grinned up at him, "Hey. Did they card you?"

"Come on, I'm not _that_ young," the Corporal pulled a third chair out and sat down, looking at the beer. He looked up at the other two soldiers. "Did you find out anything?"

Ash was looking at the beer too, but her mind was clearly elsewhere. "That C-Sec officer is responding to a shooting call."

"We don't want to get in the middle of that," Kaidan added.

"Maybe we could just sneak up on the edge of it," Rich suggested. "It might be a false report. Or maybe it's already over." He looked from Kaidan to Ash and back. "We should at least _tell_ the Commander, shouldn't we?"

Kaidan sighed, looking resigned. "Yeah. We should do that." He raised two fingers to his ear. "Message to Stephen. Sir, we've located Vakarian, but he's answering a call for shots fired near a place called Apollo's Café. I'm not sure we should bother him while he's on duty."

The "sending" icon appeared for a moment, and then was replaced:

**Undeliverable. Cached for recipient avail.**

Kaidan looked up and shrugged. "Hm. He's offline."

**# ****# #**

Fist sat in his office, having watched the exchange on security cameras. As the krogan stalked slowly out of the club, he realized the quarian was still sitting out there waiting. He'd have to be subtle.

He put two fingers to his ear. "C-Sec. I want to report being threatened by a known mercenary. I am afraid for my life. The mercenary's name is Urdnot Wrex, and he just left Chora's Den. Please help." He lowered his hand with a gesture that ended the call, and raised it again, "Zaf, Umi…uh, and Delvin. I need you guys in the service corridor by the markets."

There was a brief burst of static. The salarian voice was brimming with sarcasm, "What, _now_? You think we're gonna take on a krogan for you by ourselves?"

Fist sneered, "No, I know you _won't_ take on a krogan for me, and you'll still show up for the cut. This is the easy part that I know you _will _do. Get set up over there. I'm sending over a little bitty quarian. You think you're tough enough for that?"

"Heh…I'd do that myself," answered another salarian voice.

"Don't be too sure," Fist warned, "Saren's goons already tried to take her down, but she got away. This is for _bank_, so I want all three of you there. Box her in, take her down, get her omnitool. No omnitool, no cut. Not for any of you. In fact, you botch this, _I'll hunt you down myself_. Got that?"

The three assassins acknowledged.

"Good. You're going to have at least…uh…five minutes. Though it could take thirty, so don't get antsy; now get over there."

**# # #**

One of Tali's VIs noticed that Fist looked nervous as he emerged from the office again, performed a quick analysis, and put face-reading callouts on the man:

** Concealment ~30%  
**** Overt deception ~50%**

"The Broker really wants those cores," he said. "But I understand why you want them. Would you consider being taken to a facility that the Broker controls so he can gather the data that your analysis finds? The lab is very well equipped, and will make your work much easier and faster."

"I can leave with all the data I discover?"

"Yup."

** Blush +1.1 uV/cm2**

"And the cores?"

Fist blinked. "Uh-huh."

** MPC blood throughput increase +14%  
MPC activity +pV/CA  
**

"Liar. I want to talk with the Broker myself."

"Yeah, good luck with that. The Broker talks to you, you don't talk to the Broker."

"You're in there talking to him now," Tali rose from the couch, pointing into the office. "I am talking to the Broker, or I am leaving."

"It's…no, I'm…the communicator is keyed to me." He tapped his left collarbone with his right index finger. "If you're in there, it'll close up. I don't think the Broker trusts anyone, that's why he wants the cores himself...or at least to extract the data himself."

"I've already extracted more data than he could hope to get. I was doing it _as the cores were self-destructing_."

"I don't know the technical stuff. But the Broker's facilities will have more advanced gear than you could be wearing. Or carrying."

Tali sighed and shook her head. _Well, that might be true_, she realized, but she still couldn't let herself be pushed around too much. "I'm sorry, I just can't let the cores go. They are too important to the future of my people. Isn't there some way I can keep them?" Fist seemed to be thinking, so Tali pressed, "I could be really helpful in the analysis; nobody knows more about the geth than we do."

Fist looked at the quarian's mask, realizing that there was a person under there…and that he was going to have to get her to trust him so he could send her to "meet the Shadow Broker," giving his men time to get in position. He also had to get her out before the mercenary came back, and his call to C-Sec might just do that. But he didn't like killing little girls, even alien ones, and juggling so many considerations slowed him down.

"Okay! Okay, I'll see what I can do. But you'll have to wait. It will take some time…at least give me a few minutes. The Broker doesn't come down here unless…uh…absolutely necessary. I'll just explain that…this is one of those times. Considering there's a million credits on the table, I think that would make it possible." He held up a hand to reassure her, "But you shouldn't wait _here_."

"Why not?"

"The…the people who tried to kill you before are still trying." He rubbed his forehead. "They sent a krogan to try to kill you; my guys chased him off. Ah…I don't know…I'm going to…have to try to get him here. The Shadow Broker, I mean. But he doesn't…" He looked away. "Shit. You'll have to meet him someplace else."

"What's the problem?"

"Like I was saying about how 'you don't talk to the Shadow Broker'…I can't just…call him in like backup or something. I'm not his boss. And he's set up so he's hard to get to, or even to talk to."

Tali began to realize that even wealthy and powerful aliens had problems of their own, and she couldn't simply demand miracles.

Fist appeared to have decided something. "But I have an idea. Wait here. I'll be right back." Without waiting for her reply, he stepped away to his office again.

***** Glossary *****

C-note: 100 credits

CA: Calculated Axon. As of 2180, the measure of neuronal activity can't be detected at range through an intact skull with 20% accuracy, but electrochemical activity can be, though it must be averaged across an axon matrix, which in turn relies upon an "average" neuron's axons, both the number, size, and particulars of which must be _calculated_. The result can function as a "lie detector" with a reliability over 90%.

MPC: Medial Prefrontal Cortex

subvocalizing: articulation without airflow over the vocal cords activates the same areas of the brain as if one had spoken aloud, but allows for very private messaging

top: highest ranking member of an operation or fireteam

transtating: temporary conversion of a material from one state to another by use of a plot device, the author having decided he'd rather do something merely interesting instead of already scientifically credible. Still, state changes usually involve transfers of thermal energy. Could this be accomplished temporarily, and the energy recovered? The answer is left as an exercise for the reader.


	13. Chapter 13: Barla Von

*** Barla Von ***

The elevator to the Council Chambers had deposited the four Alliance personnel back at the Presidium; Ash, Kaidan and Rich had spotted a public transport station and headed straight for it. Shepard called up the map he'd gotten from the Avina terminal to find the best way to this Barla Von.

His VI quickly located the establishment that Von owned, on the other side of the water, and placed a callout on it. As Shepard watched the taxi lift away with the rest of the team aboard, he turned slowly, taking the scene in.

It _was_ a lot like a business park on Earth. Structures over 20 stories high swept skyward in graceful curves, fountains dotted the water. Birds chirped from trees that looked completely familiar. He found himself veering to the right, only slightly out of his way toward a series of lighted pillars that opened into an area that below the water level. The causeway angled to the left, away from them.

But it took him right up to something that looked like it simply didn't belong: a tiny mass relay.

Mass relays, one of the amazing bits of technology left by the Protheans, formed a sort of subway system around the galaxy. Drop into this one here, pop out of that one over there. But "there" could be 90,000 light years away. Though there was a measurable delay, it was milliseconds of "discontinuity" from one relay to the next.

There were under a hundred known relays, and while others were being discovered from time to time, they were enormous; fifteen kilometers from end to end, looking oddly like a tuning fork with a ring near the closed end; actually a group of rotating rings holding in place an exposed element zero core almost a kilometer across. The rings were powered by the core, and kept its emissions down to almost zero; consequently, mass relays were effectively "astronomical blackbodies," undetectable at interstellar distances.

And yet here was one barely fifty meters long with no eezo core. Shepard studied it as he approached, noticing that while everything else in the Citadel was kept shiny and white, this relay was dingy and gray. It looked ancient, in fact, and out of place. Even the causeway he was walking on seemed to be trying to avoid it.

"Victor Indigo, can you get the Avina terminal for me? What's this mass relay thing doing here?"

The Avina avatar appeared in a window on his ARO. "Discovered by the asari who first arrived at the Citadel, the relay monument is one of the station's most interesting and controversial features," the VI said. "What is the meaning of this striking piece of art? Is it a tribute to Prothean vanity? A reminder of their conquest of the galaxy through mass relay technology? Or perhaps it is a symbol of unity, a Prothean acknowledgement that the relays would eventually lead other species here to the Citadel?

"No one can say for sure, making the Relay Monument a favorite topic of discussion among academics and scholars."

He stopped in front of it, studying its details. His ARO superimposed a wireframe of a mass relay over it; the thing was an exact duplicate in every detail. He wasn't close enough to scan it with his omnitool, but at this distance, TransOpter showed it had internal structures. Even the lighting appeared to be operating, presumably drawing its power from the environment.

He continued to stare at it for almost a minute, wondering if it had ever operated as a mass relay, perhaps reducing the size of things that came through it somehow, or else its counterpart was of the same size. At last, he turned left and continued along the angled section of the causeway.

Birds and trees were pleasantly distracting; he touched a key on his wrist as he walked, retracting and collapsing his helmet. It was a trade of snug, armored climate control for the ability to smell, be a part of the world. A deep breath brought an array of fragrances: Freshly cut grass, vanilla, Impervium, and the cool sensation of a gentle breeze on his face.

_What a beautiful place_, he thought, _At least I understand the appeal now._

He looked over his shoulder as he walked, getting one last look at the miniature mass relay before it was obscured by trees. Looking for Barla Von's office, he noticed a hall to his left; it was populated with asari, salarians, and a few humans. Fabrication Control Arcs stood in perhaps a dozen places, but only a few of them had operators.

_That's weird_, he thought. He approached, intending to ask one of the humans, but his eye was caught by a bright magenta-colored pillar.

His onboard VI noticed his attention and displayed, **Hanar: Normally waterborne, sapient ichthivore. Address as "Delan."** He approached slowly, watching as the thing – it must have been almost three meters tall – simply stood there, undulating gently.

A voice came from it, sounding distant and ethereal. "Ah…_human_. This one is greatly pleased to see you here in its decadent Emporium."

Shepard couldn't help but smile to be addressed in this manner. "Thank you. Is this whole hall yours?"

"This one is merely a shopkeeper and technician among many. It has been here for many cycles, and most other operators allow it space for…unusual projects."

Shepard paused, trying to understand all that he'd just been told. "So who are you?"

"This one's face name is Delanynder, though many in this place simply call it 'Delan.'"

He gestured to the fabrication equipment. "And you're…both a maker and a seller?"

"Truly." The hanar dipped slightly, as if bowing in acknowledgement. "Please take time to examine the fine goods it has for purchase, all of great worth."

"What exactly do you sell?"

"Only the finest and most luxurious items that credits can buy. This one is able to fabricate almost any item the human would desire…for a price, naturally."

"I'd like to see these _rare and wonderful_ items." He smirked to himself. _Surely they're just overpriced_, he thought. _I wonder if this thing can detect sarcasm?_

"Oh, this one is pleased to do so, human. You will not be disappointed." With the bulk of its mass perched atop six slender tentacles, Shepard had expected a weird dance if the hanar was going to go anyplace. Instead, it seemed to ooze downward, out of the way of the holographic displays behind it. All but one of the tentacles curled into loops at its base; the last reached up to the controls, and manipulated them. "This one has several items that it has fabricated based on existing designs from the Sirta Foundation, Serris Council and Devlon Industries." Isometric views of armor and weapons appeared, slowly parading across the lowest of the holopanels.

"Wait, then. Before you get started, can I buy fabrication licenses from you for those companies?"

"Of course. It is also a Class 1 franchisee and able to accept both subsidiaries and cofabbers."

"It's not for me, but my ship is new, and the MFO had to leave his licenses with his previous ship. I know the Alliance doesn't generally buy the alien corporate licenses, but I thought I could afford them on my own."

"Certainly, human." The lone tentacle whipped to another section of the panel, moved in a blur, and then returned to its presentation.

**K. Alenko: We're here, sir. Jenkins is investigating the market. Williams and I are headed to the club**, displayed Shepard's ARO.

In a separate translucent window, it added,

**Offered for sale: Sirta Foundation fabrication license - 92 credits (81 + 11VAT)  
****Offered for sale: Serrice Council fabrication license - 92 credits (81 + 11VAT)  
****Offered for sale: Devlon Industries fabrication license - 92 credits (81 + 11VAT)**

Shepard accepted all three, and lowered his omnitool. Looking up, he saw the holographic panels had continued to fill with products with which he was passingly familiar and largely uninterested.

The magenta jellyfish-out-of-water apparently noticed this. "But perhaps the human is not looking for the mundane. This one notices the other wears Earth Alliance armor."

Shepard looked from the holography to the hanar. "I wouldn't normally, but my CO – that's my Commanding Officer – asked me to."

"This one offers its condolences for the encumbrance. Though it also notices an opportunity. If the human is interested, this one would welcome the opportunity to both lighten and strengthen the other's armor."

"That would take some serious time, I assume."

"Truly. But would this not be of benefit to the other? What is the value one's health or life?"

Shepard smiled in amusement. "You're quite a seller…but I have a meeting to get to, and I hope you'll excuse me; I think I should be going." He took a step backward.

"It hopes it has not offended, and invites the other to return soon. This one is constantly innovating and experimenting."

**# # #**

Fist had noticed from the camera view that Saren had been aboard his ship, and since that meant the turian and his girlfriend were going somewhere, they would almost certainly still be there. He opened Recent Calls, and touched the most recent **Unknown Caller 04**.

**Connecting.  
Encryption handshake.  
Key applied successfully.**

Fist almost rolled his eyes when Saren's pet asari answered, looking as haughty as she always did.

"Fist. What is it?"

He raised his voice slightly, spoke past her as if she wasn't even there, "Hey, Saren. That info I sold you about the quarian's offer must have been real hot. The Shadow _Borker _sent a mercenary over to say so."

"And…?" Saren switched the display to the screen near him, and leaned on an armrest irritably.

"And I might need some help. It's a krogan. Looks like former Blood Pack. Real big."

"For the price of that intel conversion, you can afford all the help you want." Saren shifted in his chair. "Is there something else? I'm busy."

"The intel leak you're trying to plug by killing the quarian is getting bigger. Your hit on the Alliance colony? That ship is here at the Citadel; they just sent a couple of flunkies to shake some info out of a C-Sec human…uh...Hawking? No wait…_Harkin_. They called their superior after they came in and leaned on him. Something about a C-Sec officer named Vakarian." Fist waved at another of his displays. "Looks like they messaged out, but no reply came back."

Saren had years of practice at negotiating, but Benezia noticed him cracking his right talons. _He's anxious_, she thought.

"Shepard?" Saren leaned up close to the camera. "That officer from Anderson's ship?"

Fist pointed at the display he'd reading from. "Snooper says he was talking to someone named 'Steven'. Is that the guy you're looking for?"

Benezia made eye contact with Saren, and held up a hand, advising restraint.

Fist tapped on the display to his left. "Looks like they're still sitting there for the moment."

"I can't get there ahead of him," Saren realized aloud, thinking about the location of Fist's club. "Delay them. Send drinks to his people. And send over some dancers to distract them; keep them there long enough to draw Shepard out. Kill him at the bridge from that gray market station."

"You're kidding, right? I got enough troubles when that krogan comes back; he'll probably bring friends. You think I can just hire new guys before he gets here?"

"Have _you _figured out how easy it is to hire new people when you can pay them well?"

"Not in the next five minutes. I don't keep a bench of potential hires. _I don't have any more_. Even G'haz isn't an assassin, he's a bouncer; my top three guys are setting up to meet your quarian."

Saren began scraping one talon across another, sharpening them both. "I'll send you some contractors. And it will come out of your down payment."

"Only if they live," Fist parried.

"Your problem, human, is that you keep hiring incompetents." He looked up at the screen. "I'll brief them and send them to replace your doorkeeper. When they're done, you'll pay them directly. _Don't let the little people leave before Shepard gets there._" Saren casually closed the link again.

Benezia sighed.

"I don't want to hear it," Saren growled. "_'We can find a better way.'_ You seem to forget that even if this works, billions will die. If Shepard alerts others to the message of the Beacon, they may do something about it, and all our work will be for nothing."

"They've already rejected his report—"

"I know! And that is why we must be rid of him _now_. He's the only other source of information on it. He _must _be eliminated!" He pointed across the cabin at her, "Call Temmer and Eldil. Send them to Fist's club. Three hundred thousand credits to the one who kills Shepard, two hundred thousand to the other. Make sure Fist keeps the soldiers there long enough to get Shepard."

**# # #**

The door to the financial office was open; as Shepard approached it, he noticed a salarian leaning idly against the wall next to it. Shepard's ARO flashed a warning, and then covered the salarian with callouts.

**Quick-deploy Derringer needlegun****  
****Shielding +160****  
****90cm retractable foil****  
****Augmented venom glands and musculature****  
****Overclocked STG ARA**

The list went on, but Shepard simply made a mental note that this doorkeeper was not a character to be taken lightly. He also pretended to be ignorant of it, and continued into the one-room establishment. VI systems covered the walls on both sides, a decorative holograph filled the far end, and a low desk sat near the middle of the room. Behind the desk was a rotund, environment-suited alien just over a meter tall. Shepard found himself smiling again; the volus really _did_ look like beach balls with little arms and legs.

"What's this? One of the Earthclan…?" The volus paused, reading from an ARO. "Ah, a very famous one, yes? You are the one called Shepard." He extended his arms toward Shepard in a gesture of volus welcome. "It is a great honor to welcome the hero of the Blitz."

Shepard stopped quite short of the desk in surprise. "Thanks," he replied. "I…don't get that from a lot of aliens." He returned the gesture from across the room as his ARO prompted, and took another step toward the desk.

"Forgive me, Earthclan. My name is Barla Von; my job makes it necessary for me to keep informed. I am a financial advisor to many important clients here on the Citadel. When someone as notable as yourself arrives on the station, I take notice."

"I've heard you work for the Shadow Broker. Do you have any information about Saren?"

The door behind him immediately hissed closed and thunked quietly. A tone sounded.

**Room secured. Surveillance Countermeasures in effect. No ERD operation permitted**, read Shepard's ARO. Highlights began to appear on the devices lining the walls, the ceiling, and the desk as equipment came to life. The local network access indicator dropped to zero.

Shepard carefully raised one hand to his chin as a distraction - as he lowered the other toward the sidearm on his leg.

The volus answered as if nothing had changed, "You're very blunt, Shepard, but you're right, I am a representative for the Shadow Broker…and I do know something…about Saren."

"I also hear your info can be expensive."

"Normally this information would cost a small fortune. But these are extraordinary circumstances. So I am going to give it to you…for free."

"Free?" Shepard folded his arms. "What's the catch?"

"There is no catch. The Shadow Broker is quite upset with Saren right now. They used to do a lot of business. Until Saren turned on him."

"Hm. I think Saren's turned on a lot of people lately."

"No matter what you've heard, Saren's not stupid. He knows the Shadow Broker is a valuable ally. Turning on him doesn't make any sense…unless there was something really big at stake. I don't know the details, but the Shadow Broker's hired a freelancer to deal with it. A krogan mercenary."

Shepard paused, waiting for the volus to continue. "That's not much to go on."

"I just told you that the most famous spectre in the galaxy betrayed the Shadow Broker, and will identify the enforcer who's been hired to make the hit. Quite a bargain, considering the price. Speak with the krogan if you want to learn more." He pointed at a holographic display to his left. "I see he is paying a visit to Citadel Security. If you hurry, you might catch him before he leaves the academy."

"Isn't it strange that a mercenary on a contract would want to speak to C-Sec?"

"Very. But I suspect the visit was not entirely his choice. You'll need to speak with him if you want to know more."

"Have you met this krogan?"

"No, but I will know him when I see him. He will be coming here after he completes his assignment."

"Which is…?"

"_Valuable and privileged information_," Barla nodded slowly.

"And what are you or the Shadow Broker hoping I'll do with this information?"

"I suspect that the Broker would like it if you managed to kill Saren and his agents." He paused to inhale. "I have met with the Spectre on several occasions, and would rather he be saved. He is a valuable member of the Spectres, and I can personally attest to the fact that his actions have saved thousands of my people. The turians are our military patrons, after all."

Shepard frowned. "He may have led an attack of geth against a human colony. Unless the Council put him up to it, I think something has changed."

The volus made a circular motion with his left hand. "Indeed. But perhaps it can be changed back."

Shepard's ARO added a callout to the volus' left hand: **Agreement.**

He looked around briefly for a chair; none were apparent. The volus had designed the space to make the visitor feel powerful, but it seemed the relationship was actually quite the reverse. "This place seems awfully secure. What do you do here normally?"

"Galactic finance is incredibly complex. A mix of laws, customs, and regulations from dozens of interstellar ecomomies. I'm an expert in how all these economies interact. For a fee, I share my expertise. I also offer premium services for those clients who need someone to conduct business without drawing unwanted attention. Discreet and efficient. That's my motto."

"Hmm…even _that_ sounds pretty shady."

The volus raised both hands in a gesture that Shepard's ARO identified as one of submission. "Everything I do falls completely within the bounds of interstellar commerce law. Even so, many of my clients would prefer that their transactions remain undisclosed." The slowly-gyrating holographic art behind the volus faded to black as it was replaced by a 2D holograph displaying relevant imagery.

He continued, "For example, suppose a hanar was petitioning the Council to reduce the tariffs on hanar goods. How would it look if he had personal money invested in a hanar exporting company? Even if his true motives were to help his people, he would be accused of advancing the petition for his own personal gain. I can keep his personal finances private."

Shepard watched the display, noticed as it restarted its loop, and then looked back to the volus. "Still sounds shady to me."

"Then we can only hope you will never be cursed with a large enough fortune to require my services."

"And yet you're an agent for the Shadow Broker. Any business I do with you would surely be made known to him...or them. How many of your clients know that?"

"Most of my clients know of the relationship and it makes them feel self-important...at first. Then it makes them nervous. In truth, the people in whom the Shadow Broker takes an interest are often beyond caring that he does."

"At least until it's too late." Shepard nodded to himself. "So what's your relationship with the Shadow Broker?"

"Most people think I deal in finances. This is true, but not the whole truth. My real currency is knowledge." As he spoke, the 3D projection behind him continued to change, displaying imagery that varied from relevant to what looked like simply advertising. "I trade information, and it has made me very wealthy. But the Shadow Broker is the real master. Every day, he buys and sell secrets that could topple governments. Always selling them to the highest bidder.

"Yet somehow he never seems to upset the natural balance of power. All those secrets being passed around seem to even out. Nobody ends up with an advantage in the end."

"Any guess what his identity might be?"

"Even if I did, it would cost you dearly to find out from me. But in fact, I don't know. Nobody does, and this protects both parties. The Shadow Broker could be any race, any gender. I have a theory that it's actually an entire group, working under one identity. How else could they juggle so many contacts at the same time? How else could they keep all that information from getting crossed?"

_With a good VI suite, _Shepard thought._ How can this guy not know the tech for that is not unreal, merely expensive?_

"But they've got the perfect setup," Von continued, "Every government is forced to play their game so they don't get behind. But no matter how long you play, no matter how many secrets you buy, it seems you can never win."

Shepard glanced around the room; his ARO did not seem to be finding any cameras. "I thought you'd know more about the man you work for."

"From time to time, I come across information I sell to the Shadow Broker. That's my only involvement. I like it that way. The more you know, the more dangerous the game becomes. I don't like danger, Commander. I'll leave that to you."

Shepard nodded, thinking about where he should go next, and what he had seen here already. "What's it like living here on the Citadel?"

"The station is, without a doubt, the greatest wonder in the galaxy, it is a technological marvel. But its true splendor goes much deeper than the hull and engines. From the Presidium Ring to the Ward Arms, the entire station is a testament to the success of the Council. All the species of Citadel space together…in a single, strong community."

"What makes the Presidium so special?"

"It is the political center of Citadel space. Eighty percent of all intelligent species in the known galaxy acknowledge the Council's authority," the volus paused, inhaling noisily, "on interstellar matters. But only the most powerful and influential species have embassies here on the Presidium." He inhaled again, "This level of the station is reserved for the elite, Shepard. People like us."

He snorted a laugh. "Don't let your head get too big there. You won't be able to get back out the door." Shepard waved a thumb over his shoulder. "The wards comprise the vast majority of the station's mass and resource consumption, yes? Aren't they also something remarkable?"

"Indeed they are [rasp] the cultural heart of the galaxy. They pulse with the lifeblood of millions of citizens from dozens of different species. You never know what you'll find down in the wards, Commander. [rasp] It's always full of surprises. [rasp] Fortunately, most of them are pleasant."

Shepard paused. "Is it just me, or are you having trouble breathing? Should I call for help?"

Barla waved a hand. "No. In addition to its ammonia content, my home planet's atmosphere has a relatively high pressure, so it can be something of a struggle for us - the vol-clan, that is - to breathe here. I assume you don't recognize the Frinti-designed suit I'm wearing; it's very expensive, but it has an unusual breathing assistance system. If you meet any of my clansmates, you will probably notice their breathing more."

"Hm." Shepard glanced at the door behind him. "Any places or sights you recommend? My team and I are going to have a little free time at some point, I hope. It'd be nice to know where to go or what to do."

"Of course. There is a very nice view of the station to be had for free near the entrance to Flux, an establishment that is of some interest itself." Barla Von nodded; _And it's always a good idea to send business to a fellow clansman._

Shepard nodded. "That sounds like a good start. And what's the fastest way to get to C-Sec?"

"Just outside the door and to the left is a public transit station. The main C-Sec office is in this sector, but the transit is faster than walking."

"Thank you for your time. And information." Shepard bowed slightly. As he did, the door clunked and opened.

"Not at all, Commander Shepard. Thank you. Please visit again."

As he stepped outside the door, Shepard's ARO displayed a message: **Delayed message from** **K. Alenko:  
Sir, we've located Vakarian, but he's answering a call for shots fired near a place called Apollo's Café. I'm not sure we should bother him while he's on duty.  
****Message arrived six minutes ago. **

Shepard turned and started walking the short distance to the public transit station. "Message to Kaidan: Doesn't get more official business than this. I'm on my way to pick you up. Finish your drinks or whatever you're doing and head for the taxi stand. I should be there in a couple of minutes." He lowered his arm; the taxi door opened as he approached. "Taxi, take me to Chora's Den," he said as he sat down in it.

The door hissed down and thunked into place; **Chora's Den **appeared on the Destination display. Shepard didn't lean back in the seat as the taxi lifted away from the landing spot; another air taxi rose into place from below. Aside from the fact that it was beautiful, he was still fairly curious about the Citadel.

Kaidan's reply appeared in a translucent window: **What did you find out?**

Shepard thought for a moment, then gestured for a message and spoke his reply aloud: "There's a krogan mercenary who's been sent by the Shadow Broker to kill Saren. We need to get to him and find out what he knows before this merc finds and kills him. The merc's been picked up by C-Sec, and is there now. Hopefully they can keep him there at least long enough for us to find out if the Shadow Broker told him where Saren is. What about you?"

He looked out the window, noticing that the air taxi had backed up over the water, and then slid laterally into a snug but well-lit transit accessway, where it began descending like an elevator.

**Looks like Officer Vakarian is responding to that Shots Fired call. Williams got a finder for him. We just got offered a meal here at this place where Harkin was hanging out. How much of a hurry are we in to get this Vakarian?**

Shepard gestured for another message, "Pretty big hurry…uh...don't want the trail to go cold. But I know you won't want to pass up free food; see if you can get a rain check on that meal."

The air taxi had accelerated forward briefly, joining other aircars, but then slowed and climbed as it approached a platform. Its main info window displayed a **Distance to Destination**, and it was in the double-digit meters.

"Meet me at the taxi stand. I can see it already."

As the taxi settled onto the platform, Shepard noted that the ride had cost almost 200 credits. Scowling at having to eat into his newfound money, he reached to the control interface and tapped the **Hold for Pickup** key.

_If Saren has somehow gotten control of the geth, would killing him be good or bad? We need to find out what's really going on, not kill him. This Shadow Broker either doesn't know or doesn't appreciate what's at stake here._

He looked to his right, across the space left open for aircars that sped by on levels below. His ARO added a callout to the entrance, identifying it as Chora's Den, but with no other civilian information; it was obvious but not clearly marked. Two customers stepped out and along the walkway; Shepard studied the billboard-like holographs on the walls, drumming his fingers on the armrest as he thought through what to do next.

_If I call Barla Von to explain that Saren was involved in the attack on Eden Prime, maybe I can get the Shadow Broker to cancel his kill order. But Von may not want to talk on an unsecured channel. There are simply too many unanswered questions invol—_

The aircar's canopy crazed as it deflected a sniper round; then it exploded, fragments of the glasteel shattering around him as the second round followed. His shields slowed the third round significantly, but the impact above his right ear would surely have killed him had they not been up. His VI automatically spun his cognitive acceleration up to 6x, giving him time to notice the white-hot pain on the right side of his head just before the impact smashed his head against what remained of the canopy.

**Incisor fire. Shooter located**, his VI displayed on his ARO.

It did not matter; Shepard could not see it.

**# # #**

Richard asked, "So what do we do? We just sit here and wait for him? That C-Sec guy might be somewhere else by the time we get to Apollo's place."

Kaidan toggled his gauntlet off and nodded. "Yeah…I know. I'd rather hear back from the XO. What did you find at the market?"

Rich seemed to light up at the chance to report. "It was like one of those slummy markets on Boskone. Must have been a dozen little sellers crammed in there; lots of Citadel stuff. I bought this model for my folks." He pulled a 10-centimeter box out of a pocket, set it on the table and pushed it toward Kaidan. "_That_ was 200 credits. If the Commander hadn't split the payout from the salarian, I'd have had to settle for one of the video tours, and even those are a C-note." He shook his head. "Everything here is _konko_ expensive."

Handing the model back to Richard, Kaidan noticed that Harkin was back in his chair, eyeing Ash, and not being very subtle about it. The Gunnery Chief was watching the single beer on their table with a strange intensity. "You know," she looked up and spoke toward Kaidan, "Even with that guy in his place, I am _so_ ready to go." She shook her head.

Kaidan rendered his omnitool gauntlet and glanced at it. "Nothing from the Commander yet. Though I suppose this place is so popular because of the...views." He turned to Ash, "We could go to the market if you'd rather sit there."

Rich shook his head. "Nope...there's no place to sit." He finally looked away from the dancers. "At the market."

Ash glanced at the dancer and then at Richard. "Hey, Corporal...put your tongue back in your mouth before you trip on it." She looked over her shoulder. "Maybe we can get a table on the other side?"

Kaidan looked around the circular center bar at the seating available. "Only if you want a lap dance," he said. "Otherwise ya gotta stand at the bar."

Ash glanced to her left and growled in exasperation. "Isn't there just _one_ other table?" She was very pointedly not looking at Harkin. "I can see that slimebucket still ogling me. I may have to pull his intestines out through his nose."

A salarian appeared at the table, quickly laid out napkin coasters and deposited glasses of icewater on them. The tray disappeared behind his back. "The owner has learned you just returned from Eden Prime and wishes to offer you each a complimentary meal." He gestured in the air, and menu holographs appeared in front of each of them. "I suggest you start with the Human menu. I expect you don't yet know what you want, so I'll be back after you've had a few minutes. Excuse me." He looked quickly at each of the three humans and dashed off.

Rich turned to look after the salarian. "What was that?"

"A salarian," Ash said impatiently.

"I know _that_," Rich continued to watch the willowy green alien. "I mean what kind of…treatment was that?"

"Salarians are all speedy like that," Kaidan said. "They have real fast metabolisms. I think they're usually dead by forty."

"Fourty?" Ash turned to the Lieutenant. "I thought they were like the asari. You'd have to get a lot of living in by fourty."

"Yeah, I suppose." Kaidan nodded idly, looked at the menu. "Still…this is nice. We can eat on the Citadel, and someone else buys."

Rich adjusted his menu size with a gesture, flipped to another section. "Maybe we should just order an appetizer or something. Not going to be here for long. Uh...are we?"

"Sure hope not," Ash said.

"It might be smart to go try to meet this Vakarian as soon as we can. Even with that finder, we'll have to track him down again if we don't go with what we have now."

A pair of fingers danced their way across Kaidan's scalp, and he turned, startled.

"Hey, soldier boy. I can feel _you_ from across the room." One of the asari dancers had come up behind him from the little hallway. She twanged one of his ears playfully. "These things really let you hear better?" The blue alien laughed, slid into his lap, draped an arm across his shoulders. "And you are biotic, too! I have thought there are not many biotic humans…why would they make you be soldier? You could get killed!" Her accent was unusual; most asari used a kind of neurolearning that gave them a standard VI web accent that had been in use for over a century and was easily understood by most Alliance humans. This one sounded like she had learned from a Russian.

Kaidan's right hand gripped the chair. "Ahm…uh…I didn't order a…"

"What…a lap dance?" The asari laughed again, "No, and no. I am not a private dancer, I am a _artist_. See the outfit? If I am on the floor, it is because I choose _you_."

"Oh my god, I think I'm going to be ill," Ash thumped an elbow on the table and put her hand over her eyes.

The asari glanced at her, then back at Kaidan. "You have matriarchs in your front-line units?"

Kaidan looked quickly at Ash and then back. "What?"

"AH-len-ko." The small, attractive asari tapped a finger on Kaidan's name tag. "_Al_enko. Humans have long names, I remember. What is your long name?"

Still flustered, but recovering quickly, Kaidan said, "Kaidan Lawrence Alenko."

"KaydenlorentsalLENko. Why do you need such a long name?"

"It's actually three names, but…uh…we use the same ones over and over. Just in different orders."

"The _same _names?" A look over at Ash, "And what is _your_ long name?"

Ash had looked up at Kaidan. "Are we really going to sit here and do this?"

"She doesn't have the same names as him," Rich pointed at Ash and then at Kaidan. "The Lieutenant just means that we have…" He looked away in thought, "Oh, I don't know…50,000 _given_ names, and then variants of 'em."

The asari turned to look at Rich, and squinted. "What?"

"Usually different names for boys and girls…uh…males and females. So maybe it works out to a quarter million different names, and most people have two or three. But then family names are different. Mostly. People often name children after other family members, and that can be helpful when you're trying to figure out who's related to who…"

The asari dancer took a couple of quick sniffs of air as if smelling something. A hand shot out and brushed Rich's cheek briefly, then returned. Another sniff, and flick of pink tongue, and an almost lecherous smile formed instantly. "_You._ You have not _melded_." The sultry form seemed to almost flow from Kaidan's lap to standing behind Rich's chair. "I've wanted to try an unmelded human."

Richard inhaled shaply as he found the asari had leaned over him and gripped his head with the fingertips of both hands. There was something simply electrifying about it. His eyes were huge, but he had stopped seeing what he was looking at. "What…what are you doing?"

"I wish to first _sense_ you. Why are you so…_clenched_?"

Richard swallowed. "I'm…protected. From temptation. What you feel is the power…of…my temple garments—" He noticed Kaidan shaking his head once, quickly, and went instantly silent.

The asari looked down at him and began to smile. "Ha! That is very cute. Is it from a Earth vid?"

Ash was incendiary, "It's his _religion_, you pretentious, two-bit—"

"Chief!" Kaidan barked.

Ash looked at Kaidan, then again at the asari, and sighed.

"Sorry, she's not quite herself right now," Kaidan said. "She just lost her whole unit on Eden Prime."

The asari stood, releasing Rich's head. "I am so sorry. My greatmother was in Krogan Rebellions; she lost many friends, and never forgot them. It was very painful for her."

Kaidan's ARO displayed a message: **S. Shepard: Doesn't get more official business than this. I'm on my way to pick you up. Finish your drinks or whatever you're doing and head for the taxi stand. I should be there in a couple of minutes.**

The asari looked down at Rich again, and then ran a hand through his hair from front to back. "I am sorry to you, too. I did not mean to scare you."

"I wasn't scared, I'm…strong."

"Too scared to admit it counts _two times_," the dancer smiled, leaned over his head and looked down at him, "Are you strong enough for _me_?"

"Leave him alone," Ash growled softly.

The asari recoiled. "You are his bondmate? Or his mother?"

"Maybe I am," Ash leaned forward.

Meanwhile, Kaidan had gestured for a message. He subvocalized, **What did you find out?**

**S. Shepard: There's a krogan mercenary who's been sent by the Shadow Broker to kill Saren. We need to get to Saren and find out what he knows before this merc finds and kills him. The merc's been picked up by C-Sec, and is in custody now. What about you?**

Kaidan subvocalized,** Officer Vakarian is responding to a Shots Fired call; Williams got a finder for him. We just got offered a meal here at this place where Harkin was hanging out. How much of a hurry are we in to get this Vakarian?**

**S. Shepard: Pretty big hurry. Don't want the trail to go cold. But ****I know you won't want to pass up free food. S****ee if you can get a rain check on that meal. Meet me at the taxi stand. I can see it already.**

Kaidan looked at Ash as she leaned forward, staring daggers at the asari, and Rich, who was fighting a different kind of battle. "Okay, Shepard's almost here. Is there a way we can have this meal that was offered when we come back?" He rose from the table.

"Meal?"

Kaidan looked around the club, trying to spot the salarian waiter. "You know what? I'm not sure this is the place for me anyway. I'm sorry, we have to go." He gathered the others with his eyes, "Williams, Jenkins: Come on." He waved his head toward the door.

"Wait," said the asari, "You are looking for salarian waiter?"

Kaidan turned. "Yes, I wanted to ask if we can come back in a bit. There's a small emergency we have to deal with, but we should be back within the hour."

"This is Godo, he is only salarian waiter we need. Wait here, I will find him for you."

Kaidan was glad for the help, but growing suspicious of the attention. "Thanks, that would help. We'll be waiting by the door." He pointed.

"You will wait right here," the asari said, waving at the table and dashing off. "Do not lose your table. I will find him. Waiting for Godo."

Kaidan scowled. "I don't like the feel of this," he said. "Williams, Jenkins, get over to the door."

"I'm not leaving you, sir," Ash sounded determined, "I've done enough of that."

"That wasn't a request, Chief. If someone's after us, we make a harder target by splitting up. Now go." Glancing toward the exit, Kaidan noticed a number of people were starting to crowd the door, looking outside. The salarian waiter was facing into the club, arms extended, looking like he was trying to keep people from leaving. The krogan bouncer was also turned in toward the gathering crowd, arms out.

"That looks bad," Rich said.

"They're herding people _in_?" Ash sounded confused.

Gunfire sounded outside the door.

"That's bad!" Rich put a hand over his shoulder and grabbed the assault rifle off his SmartPak.

"Hey, don't use that thing in here," shouted one of the krogan guards. Rich glanced at him, and slapped the gauntlet key to deploy his helmet as he ran to the door.

***** Glossary *****

Ichthivore: fish-eater

Impervium: trade name of a printable, self-healing carbon material used to make most architectural facing. Highly stable, resistant to weathering and weapons fire but not to the omnigel catalyst.

MFO: Master Fabrication Officer


	14. Chapter 14: Ambush

A/N Sorry for the delay. Spent the past three weeks in Hawaii, Denver and L.A. Back on task now. Yes, it's the eleventh hour, but it's still the first of the month. So there, thppt.

***** Ambush *****

One tenth of a gram of designer carbon was surgically fractured off the ammoblock and delivered to the low-charge end of the rifle's linac .23 seconds behind two similar fragments of buckminsterfullerene. Nanometer-thick rings of element zero were sequentially charged, accelerating the shards to one-fifth the speed of light by the time it reached the end of the barrel.

During each fragment's 42-meter flight, air friction burned away about 14% percent of its original mass, releasing low-energy photons, giving each round a reddish "tracer" effect.

The last round in the sequence found the intended target, but slowed by kinetic shielding, it struck only with the force of a sledgehammer.

Blood spurted from Shepard's head; his Alliance-modified neurotronics compensated quickly for the damage. Vestibular imbalance and concussive damage were attenuated by modulating blood flow and stabilizing specific gravity of the delicate tissues. But with his helmet off, there was blood on the taxi's canopy frame as it popped up a few centimeters.

Neurotronics automatically slowed his time perception to a full 6x; the side door seemed to slow down as it hissed open. It gave Shepard enough time to convert his falling out to the left into a controlled combat roll away from the taxi. He scrambled behind the wall near the transit podium. The taxi might provide acceptable cover, but he waved his omnitool along the wall to be sure it was actually going to provide protection.

**Impervium**, reported the device. Tapping the key on his forearm that activated his helmet, he slid up the wall, standing carefully…and just a bit unsteadily.

Through the door to the taxi access, he could see entrance to the club. A krogan in medium armor was turning to keep the crowd inside the relative safety of the place, but several arms in an array of clothes and skin were holding up palmcameras and omnitools to get a better view out the door.

He shook his head. _Great. I'm a news event._

His ARO had located one shooter and an accomplice; both were in cover on the other side of the aircar passage.

External mics amplified the angry whisper of a dimodulated voice. The VI translated: "Then who opened that door?"

"I don't know…maybe the car did when the glass broke!" came the response. Shepard's VI calculated locations for the two voices, and rendered wireframe figures into place on his ARO.

"Then get over there and cut a finger or something so we can get out of here. Now!"

Shepard watched the location avatars on both of them, though they were blurry and indistinct. The one closest ran to the right, staying in cover until it got to the bridge. A turian head peeked around the corner quickly, seemed to look straight at him, and then ducked back behind the half-wall.

The darkness of the taxi access kept him hidden; Shepard stepped back, deeper into the shadows, drawing his pistol. It decompacted and charged the ultracapacitors with a soft whine.

"Weapon!" called the first voice, "He's still alive!"

"Put him in the ground!"

Shepard elevated his pistol to the top of the door, used it as a periscope to sight the far wall and fire over it twice. His ARO provided impact data as the tenth-gram slug ricocheted off the wall, but as he watched the infrared blur jump as if hit hard, gunfire threw sparks and fragments off the side of the door to his left. He recoiled quickly into cover.

"Jarrik! _Jarrik!_"

Three more shots fired quickly from outside the entrance to Chora's Den, the rounds shattering against the Impervium wall; they were followed immediately by three more shots that came through the door, ricocheting wildly around the room. It took almost a full second for them to shatter and dissipate; Shepard had only enough time to back against the wall before his shields wavered and sparked.

**# # #**

Ash's Harpoon-V was already in hand as she charged the door. "Out of the way," she bellowed, "get away from the door! Move, move move!" The patrons in her way parted quickly and she found herself confronting the bouncer they'd walked past earlier. Feet planted squarely, the krogan's green camouflage armor almost filled the doorway.

Ash was having none of it. "Out of the way, buster! Somebody's in trouble!"

The krogan took his left hand away from the wall, and held it out toward her. "Don't even—"

**# # #**

As he ran to the door, Kaidan saw the crowd part before Ash's yell, noticed the krogan squinting and raising a hand to stop her. Seeing the krogan's shotgun was still secured to his armor, Kaidan had just enough time to realize the guard was trying to keep the maniacal human from getting hurt by the crossfire.

Reaching both hands toward the green-armored bouncer, he threw a Lift field. The krogan seemed to jump in slow-motion, and then continue to soar into the air. His massive arms and legs waved frantically as he did, reaching for walls, people, anything.

Ash thumped to a halt against the wall, the body of her pistol in her left hand so she could use it as a periscope; her rifle was in her right, but supported by her left forearm. Her HUD showed what the pistol saw; around the corner, a turian with an exotic sniper rifle was aiming across the aircar passage, perpendicular to her line of fire.

Two shots came from somewhere near the smoking aircar with an open but shattered canopy.

The turian shouted something to his left, then fired toward the doorway near the taxi, adjusted his aim, and fired through it.

Ash panned her sniper rifle to the right and her view automatically zoomed in and focused on what the barrel saw. She snapped the trigger; at five meters, she could have been stoned and VI correction would have made sure she hit her target. The round accelerated to relativistic speeds, punched through the near side of the turian's head, and blew off the carapace plate on the other side in a spray of blue.

The turian skidded down the walkway, jerked once, and never moved again.

From the other side of the door, Richard sighted and zoomed in on the two fallen figures. "Ma'am! These are civvies!"

"They're a bunch of damned gangsters! They're shooting at the XO!"

Kaidan glanced at the damaged aircar. "You don't know that's him!" He gestured for RTM. "Commander! Where are you?"

Shepard leaned his pistol out of cover to look toward the door. Placing two fingers by his ear, he said, "Fireteam, I'm okay. Looks like they're down." He looked around. "Any other hostiles?"

"I think we got 'em, Commander," Kaidan replied.

"Then get on first aid," Shepard replied, "We gotta find out what these guys know." Leading with his pistol, he ran across the bridge. The turian he found there was lying in a small pool of blue blood, and looked to be either dead or unconscious. Shepard's ARO showed a pulse; as he waved his omnitool over the alien, ETVI identified a bullet in his lung.

Ash had secured her Harpoon and Stiletto, stood over the inert turian. She looked up at the blood spattered across the graffiti-free wall. "This guy's a loss," she mutterered.

"Turians are real tough," Shepard said, "See if he's got a medical VI that can help you. Jenkins, get over here. This is your first live-fire aid."

Ash unconsciously curled a lip at the turian corpse. "I'm not giving this guy mouth-to-mouth," she said. "There's nothing left but mush in his head."

As Jenkins trotted up to the XO, Shepard pulled his NNP sprayer off his belt and rolled it down the walkway toward Ash. "Then at least use this on him. He could have a family who will care about him. Alenko, show her how to use that."

Jenkins looked down at the fallen turian with a mix of uncertainty and repulsion. "Sir?"

"This turian is seriously injured. Act as if he's a soldier and save his life." He stood. "Pretend it's me. How you gonna save him?"

It seemed to take the young man almost three seconds to process this; he glanced between the injured alien, his own omnitool, and Shepard. "Uh…medical VI?"

"Good. Light 'em up. You can do it."

Jenkins dropped to his knees, waved his omnitool from the turian's head to the injury. "Uh...he's in shock…unconscious…looks like he took a round on the left side…it's…it's in his lung?" He looked up at Shepard imploringly.

The Commander nodded. "Good start. How do you treat him?"

"Medigel?"

"Is that what ETVI says?"

Richard adjusted his omnitool, waved it over the turian again. "Yes, sir."

"Good," Shepard nodded. After a heartbeat's pause, he pointed at the turian again. "Go on."

"He's not Alliance, sir. He _tried to kill you..._sir. Didn't he?"

"He's clearly wrong about some things, but if we let him die, he'll never be able to do better." He pointed again, "And _we'll have killed him by our inaction_. Hurry, or he'll bleed out."

Richard pulled a medigel pack out of a leg pocket and looked at it uncertainly as Shepard stepped over the injured turian, and started to roll him over. "Remember not to move an injured person unless they're in immediate danger, or if you can't get to the injury any other way."

The assassin was only wearing lightweight torso armor, a one-piece flexivest that fit over the shoulders and secured with a belt, providing no serious protection against a side impact, and it was covered with blood.

"Multi-tool. Scissors," Shepard instructed tersely.

Jenkins looked up at him again, and then down at his own belt. Dropping the medigel on the ground, he drew a metallic device out of its beltpacket and ran his thumb along its edge; the multi-tool extended a paid of stubby gray scissors. Clicking them open, Jenkins looked down at the injury and balked.

"Cut away the armor at the webbing. There," Shepard pointed. "That belt. Use your left finger to lift the material, and cut out a hand-sized patch, big enough to work in."

The entry wound was clean, but bleeding copiously.

"Get that medigel in there," Shepard knelt and pointed. "Notice that it couldn't have been slowed by armor, so it'll be deep. The entry wound is on the left, but the round is in his right lung. You'll want to use the syringe end of the pack. You're doing good, Jenkins, keep it up."

Rich grabbed the medigel packet off the ground, pulled the protective cap off one end and started to squeeze the medigel across the surface.

"Not just the outside," Shepard touched the younger man's shoulder, and the pointed at the injury. "That injury will be deep; wipe it with the material you just cut off him; you'll need to see where the entry wound is."

Aircars had been speeding past the club below the bridge, so when Shepard saw red and blue lights flashing from below the nearby bridge, he looked up. A C-Sec aircar rose into place next to the right side it, and it looked like another was rising into place on the left.

As the police cruiser came to a stop, yellow beams shot out from it, marking off the area from the cruiser to the club door, enclosing the area from the corner where Shepard was standing, to the taxi stand, to the door of the club, and back to the cruiser. Side-scrolling text appeared on it: **– POLICE LINE – DO NOT CROSS – POLICE LINE – DO NOT CROSS –**…

Looking back down to the medical situation, Shepard watched as Rich wiped the exposed skin gingerly, revealing the entry point for just a second before blood pooled and flowed again. The younger man recoiled.

Shepard pointed. "There it is. Now hurry; drive the syringe in there and shoot him up."

Rich grimaced as he regarded the medigel packet, then the wound.

"Hurry, Corporal. His life is in your hands." Shepard made a fist, and simulated the stabbing motion. "Insert, then inject as you pull it out. Go!"

Rich steeled himself, wiped the wound again, impaled the man's side, and made a fist. The reddish jelly squished out from between where the pack met flesh.

"Good; now pack the wound with the excess, and apply biotape."

"Sir?"

"Outer calf pocket on your favored side." Shepard drew out his own square of biotape and held it where Rich would be able to reach it. "Here, use mine for now. He's unconscious, but that won't kill him."

Armored feet approached and stopped just to Shepard's right just as Rich took the tape; Shepard began to rise to a standing position, continuing to watch the Corporal's work.

"Normally, I'd ask you to stand up slowly, and keep your hands where I can see them," said a dimodulated voice. "But then, I don't usually see first aid being offered by Alliance humans. You're a combat medic?"

Shepard looked up at the turian C-Sec officer, noticing the glint of reflected blue and magenta lights on the alien's carapace. "It's not my main profession, but I have the SDI…and a conscience," he said dryly. His ARO identified the turian as **Vakarian, Garrus - Citadel Security Officer: Detective. Active Duty.**

Shepard smiled to himself, and tapped the key on his forearm to raise his visor. "Detective Vakarian…what an incredible bit of luck."

Rich glanced over his shoulder and squinted at the C-Sec officer before returning to repair of the turian.

"Luck?" Speaking to Shepard, Vakarian looked curious. "Correct me if I'm wrong, but you just won a gunfight. That means you are quite probably a murder suspect, even if it's in the Third."

Shepard touched and held the ID badge on his chest until it displayed holographic information and updated certifications on the turian's ARA. "The only reason it became a gunfight was because I survived an assassination attempt."

He pointed at the damaged aircar, "I had just pulled up in this taxi, and was waiting for my team to join me when someone shot through the window." He paused to note the recommendations of his VI of what to officially say to C-Sec after such an exchange.

"My VI is telling me there were multiple shots fired before I had a weapon out. I'll be happy to participate in any investigation you undertake, Detective. However, I'm in the middle of an investigation myself, and I hope C-Sec will be willing to officially accept my onboard recorder data as a full and complete proxy deposition."

The turian studied Shepard's uniform, especially the hologram, with an expert eye. "So humans still use Watson blackboxes? How cute. And convenient." A pair of white-garbed Emergency personnel climbed out of their ambulance and jogged toward the C-Sec officer. Rich got out of their way, watching as they scanned the injured turian and deployed a power gurney next to him.

The ARA monocle over Vakarian's left eye scrolled data that Shepard's ARO wasn't quite keeping up with, but what he could see told him that his credentials had just been thoroughly vetted.

"It seems you are as much Commander Shepard as I could ask for." The Predator pistol compacted as it was returned to its holster, and the turian extended his right arm in what looked like an offer of a handshake. "It's good to see you again, Commander. Did you have any luck with the Council?"

Shepard's ARO winked off its prompt of a turian greeting as he took the turian's hand. "The pleasure is all mine, Detective. And no, the Council told us to go away."

"C-Sec? What the hell? Where were you five minutes ago?" Ash and Kaidan were approaching; Ash was hoping to deflect the potential difficulty of explaining the firefight by putting the C-Sec officer on the defensive. And yet here was the one officer they had seen before; Ash's tirade died unspoken.

The turian pointed down and away from Chora's Den. "On my way to find a shooting victim at a nearby clinic. Dispatch called to tell me there was a shooting here in front of Chora's Den, and told me to investigate." He waved cursorily at the aftermath. "Jarrik Temmer and Falus Eldil, known felons, lie dead at my feet. Your Commanding Officer tells me you were ambushed and defended yourselves successfully. Medics are on scene, and we may have a surviving perpetrator in custody thanks to _this _soldier's quick thinking." He indicated Richard with a wave of his arm.

Ash looked at the fallen turian. "'Perpetrator'? Don't you mean 'suspect'?"

Officer Vakarian looked meaningfully at her. "If I had meant 'suspect,' I would have said it." He shifted his stance. "In my professional capacity, I can't say that I see any real problem here but waiting for the paperwork to finish." He inclined his head toward her. "Unless there's something you're not telling me, Alliance Gunnery Chief Will-_yums_?"

Ash made an odd little smile at him, but it was hard to tell if she was laughing at the mispronunciation of her name, or the way she had been assured he wasn't going to make trouble for them after all. "Not at all, officer. It sounds like you have the whole story." She extended an arm toward Shepard, returning his NNP sprayer.

The C-Sec Detective looked toward the entrance to Chora's Den, and then again with more focus. "Hmm…would you excuse me a moment?" He walked over to where the dead turian had fallen; Kaidan followed. Vakarian knelt, careful not to disturb the corpse, and put a single talon to his ARA to make an adjustment. "NNP brain preservative?" He looked up at Kaidan. "That's very thoughtful. Not sure he deserved it. Or that anyone will pay for a download, let alone a mindclone."

"But the option is there." Kaidan looked closely at the omnitool of the turian on the ground, and then again at his own. Its analysis was informative. "These were Saren's men," he said.

Vakarian almost sneered. "You expected otherwise? Your Commander Shepard brings a case against Saren, who evades investigation _once again_, and then is set upon by known associates of that same Spectre." He bent and picked up the sniper rifle that lay almost a full meter away from the body. "What a surprise."

Meanwhile, one paramedic was finishing loading the gurney into the ambulance, the other had started a stretcher unfolding next to the dead turian. The second medic looked up at Garrus. "Have you finished the site survey, officer…Vakarian?"

The turian read from his ARA as he fitted the rifle to his shoulder, aimed the empty weapon toward the Maw. "Uh…yes. Site Survey is complete."

As Kaidan walked past him toward Ash, Shepard's ARO added a callout to the exotic rifle:

**Unregistered prototype: "Incisor"  
****Source printer: XXXXXXXXXXXXXX  
****Print date: .XXXXX**

The sound of a linac made Shepard jump; his ARO put a targeting reticle on the turian, who was just lowering the weapon from his shoulder and inspecting it again.

"Now that's interesting," said the C-Sec officer. "Three shots with each pull of the trigger. I wonder where they got this?" He looked at Shepard, then back at the taxi with its shattered canopy. He worked his omnitool, wound back a VR compilation of assorted camera views, watched the two assassins attempt the hit.

_There you have it_, Garrus thought, _The perfect weapon for a situation like this. You've got two shots to get through the glass, and then a shot to the head. And it's an unregistered print to boot._ He looked at Shepard again. "Must have saved your life to have that helmet on."

Shepard tapped the side of his head. "No helmet, at least not at the time. The only reason I'm not dead is because of shields. Which reminds me…" He docked his pistol on its leg hardpoint, tapped the key to collapse his helmet. Blood was on the side of his face, slowly oozing from a wound on his head.

"Aak," said the turian, "Are you all right? Do you need medical help?"

Shepard tried to smile reassuringly. "I've been worse." He pulled a medigel pack from his belt, squirted a bit of it on his injury, replaced it, and covered the wound with a short length of biotape. As he worked, he said, "Actually, I know it's injured, but it doesn't hurt."

The officer took a step toward him, reading from his ARA as his C-Sec armor continued to analyze the Commander's health. "But that could be…uh…neurological damage…!"

"Not with me. I've had implants since I was a kid...I was hit by a ground car. My parents were told I'd need it to prevent seizures, though it turned out I didn't. But when I joined up, the Alliance showed me how to update and leverage the thing. I can briefly throttle my time perception with it, control pain…a couple of other helpful things. This," he pointed to the bandage, "is just a flesh wound."

**# # #**

G'haz Drekal, bouncer at Chora's Den, had settled to the ground after about a minute, and had been waiting at the door, trying to catch a glimpse of the Alliance soldier who had Lifted him. He looked around briefly at the patrons of the club, most of whom were obeying the **Police Line **hologram, and realized that if he was going to this, he had better do it now.

He turned and yelled out the door. "Hey, Army!" He waved to attract attention, "Over here! I want to talk to you!"

One soldier was staring at the bluish turian blood sprayed across the wall; the other two turned toward the door.

"You!" G'haz pointed at the one in the lightweight armor, "I want to talk to you!"

The two Alliance soldiers looked at each other. "He doesn't look like he wants to cause trouble," one observed. "If he did, he would have just barreled over and started swinging."

G'haz shook his head. Humans always grossly underestimated krogan hearing.

The other Alliance soldier nodded without looking away from G'haz, and started back toward the entrance to Chora's Den. "Guess it couldn't hurt to find out what he wants."

"And if he knocks your block off, I promise I'll try to put it back on straight."

The first human continued toward G'haz, exhaling a soft chuckle. "Nice to know."

G'haz took a step back when he saw both soldiers approaching. "Not both of you, just you," he said more quietly, pointing at the taller one. "You could have hurt me."

The soldier slowed, seemed confused. "Not by just lifting you."

"Right!" the krogan shrugged, "you could have shot me or something, and all you did was lift me up. You could have hurt me, but you didn't. Am I not worth killing?"

They regarded each other momentarily; the human seemed to be thinking. "I'm…uh…I'm not here to hurt you." He pointed to his right, "When I saw you trying to stop Chief Williams here from running out into the crossfire, you didn't draw your weapon. I knew you were trying to keep her out of danger. Why would I hurt you for that?"

Now it was the krogan's turn to look confused. "You humans are strange little things." He shook his head, turned and ambled back into the club.

**# # #**

Fist, mouth open, watched the camera view of the police cruiser as it pulled up alongside the bridge. Two of Saren's best, foiled by a target wearing shielded armor, and blindsided by armed professionals that just happened to be in the club. _Well, I'm still a lot richer, and Saren can't blame me for the hit going bad_, he thought.

But at least the Big Deal was still looking good.

He raised two fingers to his right ear. "Zaf, Umi, Delvin. You guys set up yet?"

Delvin's voice answered immediately, "The _moron twins_ are arguing over who gets to use the Death Spirit. However, _I_ am here, and I'm set up. If you wanted them to be a distraction...then they're doing it."

"Have you scanned the place to make sure there aren't any new cameras?"

"I have. I'm ready for this."

"Zaf, Umi, what's the matter with you two?"

One salarian answered, speaking quickly, "We are agreed that the Death Spirit can only be worn by the senior. Zaf believes that his greater age is sufficient claim to this."

Also speaking quickly, the other added, "We agree that my age is greater, but Umi argues that because his dalatrass bought the armor, his rank is higher in that branch of the family, and this gives him the superior claim."

"We agree that my branch in the family is older, and that my rank in it is higher, but Zaf claims that—"

Fist interrupted, "Hey you idiots, we don't have time for this; knock it the hell off! I've seen both of you wear that armor, so both of you wear it now. I can't send the target over until you're ready!"

"But we only have once license, so only one of us can wear it at a time." Zaf made it sound as if that were the end of it. "Therefore Cousin Umi should make the purchase."

The turian interjected, "You see what this is like?" After hearing the salarians argue, he sounded like he was speaking slowly.

"Spend the money on a second license," Fist snapped, "You'll have plenty after this job. We're splitting 4.7 million among the whole crew. But we've got to make that hit first. If I have to come over there, I'll brain the both of you! Buy the First Month Demo if you have to, but get set up _now_!"

**# # #**

Shepard tapped the helmet key again; as it folded back into place, he made another adjustment, opening the visor as the paramedics carried the turian body past him and the C-Sec officer.

The blue-uniformed turian looked up from his omnitool. "So, Commander…what was the bit of luck you were so pleased about?"

"You said you had two more leads on Saren. I want to follow them up."

"You couldn't touch him either?"

"Not unless the Council will subpoena the blackbox records from either him or Spectre Kyrick. Saren claimed they don't exist." He folded his arms. "I don't believe that."

"Nor should you." The turian glanced at his onitool's display before continuing, "Spectres may not answer to Council law, but they still answer to the Council. How else can they know what's being done if they don't have a way of finding out?" He pointed a talon briefly at Shepard, "You've been lied to."

"But when Saren said they didn't use blackboxes, the Council said nothing!" Ash objected. "Why would they stand there and say nothing?"

Officer Vakarian turned to her. "Just because the _Council_ gets to know what the Spectres are doing doesn't mean _we_ do. It makes for bad press."

"But Saren killed another Spectre!"

Vakarian shrugged. "And if the Council decides that he did the best thing, then that will be all you'll ever know about it. They trust Spectre Arterius. He didn't get to be a legend by being a lunatic."

The _Normandy_ team stood there in disbelief until Shepard nodded at the turian. "Unless we follow up your leads."

"Or if that krogan knows something," Kaidan added.

Officer Vakarian turned to face the biotic. "There's another Krogan?"

"I don't know about 'another,' but there's a krogan who was been hired by the Shadow Broker to kill Saren. He's at C-Sec now. If he's been told to kill Saren, maybe he was also told where to find him." Shepard turned and pointed, "Alenko, Jenkins: Get to C-Sec and find that krogan. We can't let him kill any of Saren's agents; they can't tell us nearly as much if they're dead. Keep that krogan there as long as you can. Ask for directions, sell him Girl Scout cookies, offer him life insurance, whatever it takes."

Richard looked askance at the C-Sec officer. "They're probably going to want to see _you _down there, sir."

"For this?" Shepard waved a hand at the area marked off with holographic police tape. "Already handled. They'll have Official Read Access to my blackbox as soon as they connect. We've already spoken with the investigating officer." He looked toward officer Vakarian. "Victor Indigo, make the fireteam's recent firefight blackbox data available to C-Sec agents and VIs immediately."

**Fireteam Shepard, Alenko, Jenkins, Williams: Blackbox data view available to Citadel Security on demand. Ping and download notification enabled.**

Shepard looked toward Kaidan. "Meanwhile, Williams and I are going with officer Vakarian, and see if we can restart this investigation. I want you guys on your way first because I want that krogan kept there as long as possible." He tuned to Richard, "That means while Lieutenant Alenko has the krogan engaged in conversation, you'll be free to RTM me with whatever you're finding out. But keep that krogan there so he can't kill anyone." He tapped the side of his helmet, "Okay, stay in touch. Get going."

"On our way, sir," Kaidan nodded, turned and jogged over to the taxi station. Richard exchanged salutes with Shepard and then turned to follow quickly.

They watched the second taxi drop away into the acceleration zone. Officer Vakarian continued to look in the direction the taxi had gone as the damaged taxi was lowered into the automated garage on the next floor down. "That's good," he said, "but if you want to stop Saren, you'll have to get at something that'll expose him. That's why this shooting victim is the best option."

"I thought the Executioner kicked you off the case," Ash said.

"Executor," Vakarian corrected, "And his words were that _the investigation was over_. It's too late to get info for the Council hearing. But I can still follow up on my own. And luckily, this Shots Fired call seems to be relevant." He glanced at the humans quickly. "I think I can fit both of you in the cruiser if you're ready to go."

"What's your other lead," Shepard asked.

"Footage of Saren on Eden Prime during the attack."

"What?! How'd you get that?"

"Council Security Search Engine…all I had to do was ask. Think like a detective: The modern world is full of cameras. The video is of him at the Eden Prime spaceport, but it's not DisplayID, and he's in a full helmet. But he's with someone in black with a facecloaker. It's implicating, but only if it can be corroborated with something else."

"And if relevant people aren't dead…" Shepard mused. He looked briefly toward where the taxi had gone, then at the turian. "All right then, let's get moving."

**# # #**

Wrex spread his arms and looked around as if seeing the place for the very first time. "Ahh, Citadel Security. I wasn't sure I'd see it again this trip." He turned his head slightly as he walked past the desk. "Officer Do, why doesn't your boss just invite me to stay here?"

The human refocused on the krogan walking past his desk, resigned himself to the krogan's so-called humor. "I wouldn't tempt him if I were you." At least he wasn't as disagreeable as most other krogan they had to bring in.

Sergeant Eason seemed to materialize from a corner, stopping in front of Wrex and the accompanying officers. "Wrex Urdnot, why do you make me waste so much time on you?"

"_You're_ the one who sent his minions to grab me off the street," Wrex said, waving his head toward the armed C-Sec officers on either side.

"You're the one making trouble. Witnesses saw you making threats in Fist's bar. Stay away from him."

"I don't take orders from you." Wrex growled.

Eason poked a finger toward the massive krogan, "It doesn't have to be all informal like this; I'm trying to prevent an interplanetary incident."

"Then the Council shouldn't have taken our embassy away." Wrex leaned toward the Sergeant. "You can't touch me."

Eason leaned in closer, "I can if you set foot in his bar again."

"I'd be doing you a favor. We both know the kind of scum that flows through that place."

"Don't start that vigilante crap with me again. This is your only warning, Wrex."

"You _should_ be warning Fist. I _will_ kill him."

"You're going to express intent to an officer of the law? You _want_ me to arrest you?"

The massive krogan chuckled. "I want you to _try_."

"Go on, get out of here." Eason waved a backhand, and watched the krogan lumber off. With a scowl, the Reception Sergeant gestured for RTM. He subvocalized, **Fist, It's Pat. Your official complaint let us pull that krogan in, but I don't have any way of holding him here. All I could do was slow him down. If I were you, I'd get ready for a brawl. You owe me for this.**

The response came back after a pause: **Fist:** **No surprise, but thanks for trying.**

**# # #**

Vakarian stepped over to his cruiser; the doors clunked and opened. "It's kind of fortunate that there are only the two of you." The front passenger side of the cruiser's cabin was piled high with clothes, various devices and boxes, and a small collection of locked weapons cases.

"She threw you out?" Ash joked.

Officer Vakarian sighed. "She was killed for this crap." He turned and faced Ash. "Wait, how did you know it was a female?"

"I'm sorry, that was a really dumb thing to say." Ash swallowed, shook her head. "I thought I was making a joke."

With another look at the various chattels, the turian leaned across the console, placed the prototype rifle in the right seat with a sigh. He settled into the pilot's chair; the two Alliance officers climbed into the back as he touched controls. "It was a hit gone bad. Wrong place at the wrong time. I'm taking this stuff back to the shelters for her family." He glanced over his shoulder quickly. "But later. First, we have to see what we can find out about this shooting victim."

Shepard leaned forward. "The Saren case, right?"

"Right. The cameras that saw her get shot show a blood spray, so I know she took a hit; looked like it was in the shoulder. But then she turned up at a clinic that she should have needed a taxi to reach, and there's no record of her on public transit."

Ash kept looking out the window. "Cameras showed blood, you don't know who shot her, and she's moving around the station as if by magic?"

Vakarian manipulated controls; the C-Sec cruiser dropped away from the bridge and yawed left. Lights atop the vehicle continued to flash blue and red as they accelerated. He looked over his shoulder at Ash.

"Look, officially I can't say this, but I know who pulled the trigger. Unfortunately, I can't do or say anything about it until we have a complaint or a corpse. And while cameras are much less expensive than officers, they only help _solve _crimes, not _prevent _them."

He turned in his seat so he could address the two humans more easily. "And no, it's not magic, it just means she's probably been here long enough to discover the traversable cracks in the infrastructure. Duct rats do it all the time. It's why we have to keep the different evacs and self-cleaning to a moderate level: If Citadel Control actually purged these systems regularly, it would solve lots of other problems. But people sleep and eat, and...you know…_live_ in these places. Sometimes they fall out of the Kiggs field into empty space; most of them fall all the way into the Maw, and only record we have of them is the increase in Maw input."

The cruiser slowed as it turned and slipped into an opening in the wall. Vakarian continued, "That's why I have to find this quarian. Or, at worst, her omnitool."

Ash tilted her head. "It's a girl quarian?"

"Right. Or at least that's the way I read her suit. Sometimes you get cross-dressers, but I don't think that's what we have here." As he turned to face ahead again, the cruiser settled into the one parking place, the other two having C-Sec cruisers already in them.

"You sure you're not gonna get in trouble for keeping up with this investigation?"

The turian pounded a control, and the door thunk-clacked open. As they climbed out of the aircar, he answered, "Yes, they officially took me off the investigation, but I've got to stop this guy. My co-worker Myvas intercepted a transmission to those thugs you just took down from one of Saren's known associates, a small-timer who calls himself 'Fist.' This Saren – I'd bet a million credits it's Saren Arterius – wants some quarian dead, and to threaten into silence anyone who's had contact with her."

They followed the turian officer as he started across the garage toward a flight of stairs. Standing next to where they had just parked was a human in a C-Sec uniform who appeared to be working on one of the parked cruisers. Various service panels were open or completely removed, and parts were scattered around him on the floor.

"Hey, Garrus," the man said over his shoulder.

"Hey, Eddie," Vakarian answered. He turned to Shepard, "Come on, Doctor Michel's clinic is just over there," he waved a thumb over his left shoulder as they reached the stairs, "Anyway, I _think_ it's the same quarian who was shot. I hope it was, but to know, I've got to find her first...to get her help if she needs it, and get her someplace safe if she's not. Come on." He vaulted up the stairs; the two humans followed quickly.

***** Glossary *****

ARA: Augmented Reality Appliance

ARO: Augmented Reality Overlay

buckminsterfullerene: an arrangement of carbon (c-60) of unusual strength, named for the scientist Buckminster Fuller, whose geodesic dome design it resembles.

ETVI: Emergency Treatment VI, or "ET-vee"

Maw: A low-gravity point of attraction at the Nebula end of the Citadel. Its design intent seems to have been to keep the Traffic Control lanes free of debris. Its gravity well is not steep, but - in conjunction with the gravity of the white dwarf at the heart of the Widow Nebula - it does manage to keep the local space clean. Matter that falls into the Maw is directed into a chamber where all test probes have been destroyed. It is speculated that this is a molecular furnace that supplies the Citadel with raw materials for its own ongoing construction and maintenance.

SDI: Special Duty Identifier. A field of certified or professionally vetted expertise outside a normal Classification Code. Often used as s stepping stone into a new field of work, or as a way of earning extra points toward advancement in rank.

subvocalize: to articulate speech without exhaling, often done without opening the mouth. Allows for messaging or vocal commands to onboard VIs to be issued privately.


	15. Chapter 15: Urdnot Wrex

A/N: While this is waaay too late to do anything about it, I happened upon an op ed piece I think may be the best analysis of _what's wrong with the ME3 ending_ and I'd like to recommend it to you here: doycetesterman dot you-know-what/2012/03/mass-effect-tolkein-and-your-bullshit-artistic-process/ (paste that into your browser's address bar and edit that as should be obvious.)

And now, back to our story:

***** Urdnot Wrex *****

Sol Halvorsen had been wearing an ARA for most of his life. It wasn't as invisible as an ARO, but it didn't require brain surgery, either. It meant he took some crap from the rest of Fist's crew about being a _cyborg _(which was less true than if he'd gotten an ARO,) but his short fuse had given him a reputation. Nobody said anything about it anymore.

As he stepped into the clinic, the red-haired doctor was walking their way. "Hello, and welcome to the Medical Clinic," she said, "How can I—" She stopped as she noticed that all four people who had just entered now had weapons in hand. That almost always meant that they had just been in a fight. Then she recognized the taller man. "Oh…Sol." The brutish man had never actually threatened her, but he made her uneasy. "Who's hurt?"

Sol waved his henchmen forward, spoke over his shoulder to one, "Shut this place down, Dix." He turned back to the doctor. "Nobody…yet," he said. "We're just here to make sure it stays that way. Did you see a quarian in here today?"

"Well…yes, about three so far," the doctor stopped walking, "Why?"

Sol held up a data tablet showing a still of a quarian in a gunsight. "This one. You seen her?"

Chloe squinted at the image. "I know you can tell better by suits, but I haven't had—"

"Don't have time for this, doc." He held the tablet closer. "Have you seen _this one_?"

"I think so, but why are you—"

Sol interrupted, "Did you treat her?" His men made their way around the half wall and started scanning the beds with their omnitools.

"Of course…if that was her, but—"

He stepped closer to the doctor, "Where is she now?"

"I sent her to your boss…to Fist!"

Sol grinned with malice. "Good answer. Now here's the trick. We don't want anyone else finding out about it. You understand?"

Chloe took a step back, using a one-handed gesture to her omnitool to signal for C-Sec help.

**No network.**

She started to panic. "What? What do you mean?"

He took another step closer, lowered the tablet, put his face up closer to the doctor's. "I mean people might come asking. And when they do, you don't know nothing about it…got it?"

Dr. Michel pointed up at one of the cameras. "They won't need to ask, they'll know she was here. If they come and ask—"

Sol put his hand on his holstered sidearm. "Then _you don't remember_. We don't want this getting pointed back to Fist, see?" He drew the weapon, but kept it near the holster. "You don't tell anyone else, right?"

"No, no…of course not!"

"'Cos it'd really be a shame if you had accidentally let it slip…"

"I didn't tell anyone, I swear!"

"That was smart, doc. Now if C-Sec comes sniffing around, you _stay_ smart, right? Keep your mouth shut or we'll—"

**# # #**

As Garrus approached Dr. Michel's clinic, he noticed that the network connection had dropped almost to zero. His fringe contracted reflexively. Network reliability on the Citadel was legendary; if the network failed, it meant someone was deliberately jamming it.

He drew his pistol and glanced at Shepard. "We've got a problem."

Shepard stopped behind him, looking around at the ceiling and walls. His ARO switched modes and put color-coded callouts on potential threats. Neural implants automatically accelerated his awareness to 2x so he had time to analyze the world as he dropped his hand to his sidearm but did not draw it. "What? What do you mean? How do you know?"

"Network jamming; always means trouble." He turned to Shepard. "Wait right here so you don't activate the door; give me thirty seconds, and then go in." He pointed at the clinic door and explained, "I have another way in, but I'll need a few seconds to get to it."

Shepard's ARO added a 30-second countdown timer to his view as he drew his sidearm and watched it decompact. "Thirty seconds," he said. "Clock is running."

Vakarian turned and ran back the way they had come.

"Shotgun?" Ash was holding her Banshee.

Shepard nodded. "No…but double-check your targets; remember, this is a _clinic_." He glanced in the direction the turian detective had gone. "I hope he knows what he's doing."

"What are _we_ going to do?"

"Wait twenty seconds, switch to firefight, and go in with weapons hot. Saren may already have people in there with the quarian. We'll have to protect her, so find her as fast as possible." Shepard looked from his pistol to Ash's assault rifle, and then up at her. "Hey, thanks for the help back there at the taxi stand."

"What…that gangster?" She shook her head. "Forget it. He needed his head ventilated." She refreshed the weapon's ammoblock. "Ready when you are, sir."

When the timer rolled down to zero, Shepard switched to Firefight Mode, accelerated to 6x, and stepped up to the door. As it opened, he heard someone inside speaking; it sounded threatening.

"…if C-Sec comes sniffing around, you _stay_ smart, right? Keep your mouth shut, or we'll—"

Fist's men turned to find Shepard and Ash stepping through the door, weapons out.

"Who are you?"

Two of the attackers jumped into cover, another fired from the hip; Shepard saw the one who had been talking grab the doctor with his right hand, positioning her as a shield.

"Hostage!" Ash yelled, raising her weapon to her shoulder.

One of the thugs fired across the room at them twice; the bullets deflected cleanly away from the military-grade shields.

Officer Vakarian leapt from the small garden opposite the door into cover behind a pillar. "Let her go!" he barked.

"Hold your fire, boys." Sol turned to the turian. "Not the way I see this happening, Vakarian." He put the muzzle of his large but relatively underpowered pistol under Dr. Michel's left ear. "Now all you friendly people put down your weapons and take a nice, easy step back."

Officer Vakarian had also been wearing an ARA for some time, but only since joining C-Sec. His salarian partner Myvas Iliop had been modifying such devices almost since hatching. So as Shepard was distracting Fist's chief enforcer, Vakarian's ARA was allowing him to target the human's weapon hand through the rest of his body.

The shot perforated Halvorsen's right shoulder, continued up and forward through the hand that was holding the pistol. Doctor Michel shrieked briefly as the man jerked to the left and fell away.

Ash raised her weapon to her shoulder. "Freeze!" Sol landed with a solid thump. "Weapons on the ground; hands on your heads! _Now!_"

Officer Vakarian still had his Predator aimed at the fallen Sol Halvorsen. "Perfect timing, Shepard. Gave me a clear shot at that bastard."

"Glad it was a clear shot; I don't think I'd have taken it. You could have hit the hostage." Pistol in both hands, he kept it trained on the middle of the three standing thugs.

"Sometimes you get lucky, but luck was not a factor." The turian put a talon to the ARA monocle. "I count on tech." He turned to the white-clad human. "Doctor Michel, _are_ you hurt?"

"No, I'm okay…thanks to you. All of you."

Shepard nodded toward the three men. "Williams, stay on those guys until C-Sec gets here."

The turian looked up sharply. "Hey, C-Sec _is_ here."

"Sorry, detective. I should have said C-Sec _backup_. You two keep these guys covered." Shepard quickly replaced his pistol on its hardpoint and waved his omnitool over the fallen man. "You know this guy?"

Officer Vakarian did not look down. "Name's Halvorsen. He's a local troublemaker, works for the owner of that club we just left. I'd bet a month's pay he's mixed up in the Saren case." Vakarian checked that the other human had the minions well covered, and glanced down at Shepard briefly. "What are you doing?"

"Trying to save him." The round had passed mostly through non-critical tissues on its way to the man's left hand, but had perforated his trachea, and Shepard lacked the specialized equipment that was required to do a really professional, scarless job. His ETVI was advising another scan so it could send designs to his fabricator, but Shepard was noticing that it would take as long for him to make them as it would for medical professionals to arrive.

Vakarian didn't take his eyes off the henchmen in his gunsight. "You know…if you just let him be, he might bleed out before help arrives. You'd be doing a service to the galaxy."

Shepard frowned, but didn't answer or look up as he rolled Halvorsen onto his back and sat on the floor, elevating the man's shoulder with his knee.

"You want me to lock these guys up?" Ash did not look away from the three men. "I can fab some handcuffs for 'em. By the time backup gets here, I'l have 'em booked and cooked."

"As you are, Chief. We'll let the local authorities handle as much of this as we can." Shepard began fabricating a 30-centimeter syringe attachment for the medigel pack's injector end. "Doctor Michel, I know those men threatened you. But if you tell us who they work for, we can protect you." He waved his omnitool precisely over the injury, then looked up when he realized the docor had not replied.

Doctor Michel took a deep breath, visibly calming herself. "They work for Fist. They wanted to shut me up, keep me from telling C-Sec about the quarian."

"Detective, does this have anything to do with the investigation into Saren?" Shepard grunted as he tried to reposition the injury so it was as straight as possible.

"I think it might. Doctor Michel, tell us what happened."

"About an hour ago, a quarian came to my office. She'd been shot, but didn't know by who. I could tell she was scared, probably on the run. She asked me about the Shadow Broker. She wanted to trade information for a safe place to hide."

Shepard pushed the flexible needle into the injury, stopping when it reached the trachea. "Where is she now?"

"I put her in contact with Fist. He's an agent for the Shadow Broker."

"Not anymore," Vakarian interjected. "Now he works for Saren, and the Shadow Broker isn't too happy about it."

Doctor Michel turned in surprise. "Fist betrayed the Shadow Broker? That's stupid, even for him! Saren must have made him quite the offer."

Vakarian nodded once. "And do I know it! That quarian must have something Saren wants _desperately_. Something worth crossing the Shadow Broker to get."

Shepard applied medigel along the entry path as he withdrew the syringe, and his omnitool showed the nanotech was already at work. He looked up at the doctor before repeating the process on Halvorsen's left wrist. "What else can you tell us about the quarian?"

"I'm not sure. Like I said, she wanted to trade information for a place to hide. She didn't…" The doctor seemed lost in thought for a moment. "Wait a minute. Geth. Her information had something to do with the geth."

"She must be able to link Saren to the geth," Vakarian turned to Shepard, "There's no way the Council can ignore this!"

Satisfied with his work, the Commander climbed to his feet. "Hope I didn't steal your show, Doctor," he looked down at the fallen man, "If you need to clean up my work, I won't be offended."

Chloe looked down at Halvorsen, then knelt next to him. "What? Oh, no…not at all. I've gotten so used to handling cases that can walk in, it was stupid of me to stand there and make you do it yourself." She waved her own medical omnitool over the man. "But I think I would have wanted to shoot him first, too."

The door hissed open and two C-Sec officers entered, weapons drawn.

"Over here," Vakarian said, stepping sideways toward the door as he spoke. "We've got an injury, but since he was shot in a clinic, he's probably going to make it. I've got to pursue; can you guys handle cleanup?" He looked toward the other C-Sec officers. "Eddie. Ah, I mean Officer Lang."

"Hi, Garrus. Glad I was close when they called. Sure thing, go. We've got this covered." He moved across the room, lifting a pair of cuffs off his belt.

Ash replaced her Banshee on her SmartPak as soon as the other C-Sec officer had a weapon trained on the three scruffy men. She spoke toward the Commander. "We can't fool around," she said, following the turian toward the door. "If the quarian went to Fist's, we need to get to her quick!"

Shepard nodded, looked at the C-Sec detective. "Time we paid Fist a visit."

"This is your show, Shepard. But I want to bring Saren down as much as you do. I'm coming with you!"

"You're a turian. Why do _you _want to bring him down?

Garrus was unconscious of the fact that his fringe contracted as he spoke; he was angry, and spoiling for a fight. "This isn't the first time I've seen people die, and the Council acts like there's nothing wrong. I couldn't find the proof I needed in time for my investigation, but I knew what was really going on. If Saren really did incite the geth to attack your colony, he's a traitor to the Council, and a disgrace to my people!"

"Well…aren't _we_ all fired up and ready to go?" Ash folded her arms.

"You don't know the half of it." The turian looked to Shepard. "Don't forget, we aren't the only ones going after Fist. The Shadow Broker hired that krogan bounty hunter to take him out, remember?"

Ash nodded, "Yeah, we saw him in the bar. That is a krogan you do _not_ want to mess with."

Shepard paused thoughtfully. "Normally, I'm not one to turn down help, but a mercenary will have his own agenda. We can handle this on our own. I don't want this guy killing people before we find out what they know."

"But after…?"

Shepard turned to Ash, ready to give his _Killing is not what we do_ talk before seeing her expression; she was joking. "Not if they were helpful," he said after a pause.

Vakarian was still trying to move the investigation ahead. "Looks like he's still at the C-Sec academy." His ARA monocle continued to scroll data past his left eye.

As he turned to face Vakarian, Shepard's ARO displayed a message:

** : The krogan is contracted to kill Fist, not Saren. **

"Looks like Fist accused him of making threats," Vakarian said. "We brought him in for a little talk. If you hurry, you can catch him at the Academy before he leaves."

"Hopefully Alenko and Jenkins can delay him," Shepard answered. "We need to get to Fist _now_, or intercept the quarian before she does."

"Come on, I know a shortcut through the markets." The turian made for the door. "Thanks again, Eddie. Sorry I can't stay for the afterglow."

The cheerful C-Sec officer waved a _right-back-atcha_ gesture at the turian. "Glad to help, Garrus. Good hunting."

**# # #**

As the two humans stepped out of the elevator at the C-Sec Academy, Kaidan's VI had identified the krogan, and the HUD displayed a callout: **Urdnot, Wrex. Address as "Wrex" unless clan is an issue.**

Thy started across the lobby toward the krogan as Kaidan continued to read the VI-generated social brief; he was looking in the krogan's direction as he did so. Normally, such focus would have been interpreted as a challenge by a krogan, but over the centuries of interacting with aliens, Wrex had grown relatively more cosmopolitan. He said, "Yes, human?"

Kaidan's VI faded the overlay to near transparency as he focused on the krogan. "Sorry…I was reading from my ARO. One of our colonies was just attacked, and we think it was instigated by a Spectre. To shut him down, we need to get evidence against him. Barla Von said to talk to you."

Wrex hunched over slightly to put his head level with the human's and answered quietly, "Barla Von is a wise volus. We may share a common goal, human."

Kaidan folded his arms. "Enlighten me."

"I've been hired to kill the owner of Chora's Den. A man named Fist. He did something very foolish."

Kaidan darkened his omnitool gauntlet and glanced toward Richard. The younger soldier was still gawking at the krogan. Turning back to the bounty hunter, Kaidan continued, "What could be so foolish that it warrants killing this Fist person?"

Rich turned suddenly toward the Lieutenant, blinked in realization, and lit his gauntlet.

The krogan continued to speak quietly. "He betrayed the Shadow Broker. A quarian showed up here on the Citadel; she was on the run. She needed protection, so she went to Fist. He promised to set up a meeting between her and the Shadow Broker. Instead, he contacted Saren, sold her out. Probably killed her."

"Killed her? Why?"

"The quarian had something that links Saren to the geth. The Shadow Broker was buying it through Fist, but Fist reneged on the deal, sold it to Saren. _Fist_ betrayed the Shadow Broker." The krogan squinted at Kaidan. "Besides, the Shadow Broker is hurting Saren by killing Fist. _Kill prey quickly, but let an enemy see his death in you_."

Kaidan's ARO displayed: **Krogan proverb.**

"Shouldn't you be trying to kill Saren?" Kaidan glanced toward Rich, and then back quickly; with his arms akimbo, the younger man was standing just a little too casually, his gauntlet still aglow.

The eye facing Kaidan blinked in disbelief. "Kill _Saren_?" The krogan chuckled. "Heh. I'd love to, but not for so little. Saren is a _hard target_. Do you even know who Saren _is_, human?"

"He's a Spectre," Kaidan shrugged. "We're trying to get the Council to revoke his status. We want him brought to justice."

The krogan tilted its massive head just enough to let Kaidan know that this idea verged on the insane. "Justice? From the Council? There is no justice but what you fight for, human. The sooner you learn that, the sooner you'll realize that the Council has no interest in _justice_."

Kaidan shook his head and shrugged. "Well, maybe this was a bad idea. We're trying to get evidence against Saren."

Wrex seemed amused at this. "And what…I'm just a hired gun?"

"That's not what I mean. You're trying to kill Fist, and we're trying to get this quarian's information. But that info is what the Shadow Broker was after in the first place. Even if we save the quarian, the Shadow Broker will still want the intel, and might try to kill us if we get it. And you'll be the one to do it."

"You think I'll stab you in the back?" Wrex chuckled again, "You humans. You scheme like salarians." He turned to Rich, pointed at the Corporal's omnitool. "That's spelled **W**-R-E-X. I hate it when aliens leave off the _sound of the rushing wind_ character."

Rich looked up at him, then quickly at Kaidan, and then back at his gauntlet in embarrassment.

Wrex turned back to Kaidan and continued, "Someone just paid off Fist. The job must already be done, and the quarian dead, because the Shadow Broker is acting like he's in a blood rage about it." He pulled a PET off his belt, held it up for Kaidan to see. The krogan ideographs it displayed were quickly covered with translations by Kaidan's ARO:

**Assignment per previous communique:  
****Proceed to Chora's Den, pick up quarian plus omnitool from Agent Fist.  
****Verify presence and data integrity of Saren's presence on Eden Prime.  
****Deliver quarian plus omnitool and any other required resources to Agent Von.  
****Provide armed escort to location to be given by Von.  
****Fee: GCr 129,000 plus expenses, GCr 25,000 up front, balance upon completion.  
****Urdnot Wrex: Accepted.**

**Fee in escrow pending delivery.  
****Update: Quarian assumed terminated. GCr 25,000 advance payment transfer complete.  
****New contract: Terminate Agent Fist. GCr 343,000 upon completion.  
Urdnot Wrex: ****Accepted.**

**Fee in escrow pending confirmation from Citadel morgue.**

Wrex paused to let Kaidan read it, then explained, "But if Fist _hasn't_ already killed her, you can still get her. The Shadow Broker's not after the quarian except as a way to get leverage on Saren. See? I'm no threat to you, I'm just out for Fist. And if he's killed your quarian, you should be after him, too."

Kaidan pointed at the device. "How old is this update?"

The krogan turned the computer so he could read from its display. "A few minutes ago."

Richard had watched this exchange intently. "Sir, I don't think we want to kill Fist even if he _has_ killed the quarian. Even if he did, her omnitool may still have the evidence. But we'll need him to tell us where it is."

"Don't worry about Fist," Wrex interrupted, "That's my job." He turned to the right and pushed past Kaidan, heading for the elevator.

The two Alliance soldiers exchanged a look; Kaidan lit his gauntlet as Rich's eyes widened in alarm. "Uh…wait! Mister Wrex, sir. Uh…" He leapt after the krogan only to find himself facing armored teeth. "You can't kill him! We need his information!"

Wrex looked down at the human and sighed. "Listen Tiny, if I don't kill him, my rating goes down. The contract and payment gets handed to someone else. I lose twice, and he's still dead." The krogan glanced toward the elevator. "But how about this: When I find him, I'll just squeeze out of him where the quarian or the omnitool is before I pinch off his head. Everybody wins."

"Except Mister Fist."

"Heh…right. Well that's his own damn fault, isn't it? Here's an important safety tip…" Wrex leaned up close to Rich's ear and rumbled, "Don't…cross…the Shadow Broker." He gently tapped the Corporal's torso armor with a single finger in time with the next three words, not enough to push him, but to drive the point home, "Very bad idea."

The words hung in the air for a moment, and then Wrex turned for the elevator again.

Rich looked at Kaidan once more, then back at the krogan. He stepped a foot into the elevator doors. "How…did you know…I mean, why did you spell your name out for me?"

Wrex sighed. "You were messaging someone, right? And it was about me, right? So I was letting you know that I knew."

"But how did you know?"

"Been at this for a loooong time, Tiny." Wrex reached out and casually shoved Rich away from the door with one hand as he punched the Door Close key with the other. "Can't tell you all the tricks."

The elevator door closed between them.

# # #

Kaidan flinched as he saw the young Corporal turn away to take on the massive krogan. He gestured for RTM.

**Found the krogan. We can stop him, but it'll take bullets. Lots of bullets.**

The delay was brief before Shepard's reply: **Very funny. No bullets. Did you find out where Saren is?**

Kaidan messaged, **The krogan isn't after Saren directly, just after his agent, a guy named Fist who owns that bar we were just in. Chora's Den.**

**Wish the volus had just said so,** Shepard replied. **I wonder if he sent us to the bounty hunter so he could stop us?**

Kaidan continued, **Don't know. But he confirmed that Fist had a quarian with intel that compromised Saren. Fist was going to sell to the Shadow Broker, but then sold to Saren instead. The Shadow Broker wants Fist dead. But Fist may be the only way to get the quarian, or her intel. We have to get Fist before the krogan kills him. The krogan's on his way up there right now. We're taking a taxi, so we might get there before him.**

Shepard's reply came back, **Let's hope. We're on our way to Fists's bar now. Looks like the quarian's there.**

**# # #**

With the elevator far above the humans, Wrex manipulated his omnitool. The RFID tracer he had applied to the young soldier was returning a signal, and it showed them still on the Customs level of C-Sec Diplomatic Entry.

The humans weren't trying to hurt him, or even stop him directly, but the grizzled old krogan knew a delaying action when he saw one. The baby human – _the baby_! – had tried to face him down. _Quite a quad on that one_, he thought. _The heart of a true fighter._

The signal began to move; the wrong way at first, but quickly. They had taken a taxi.

Wrex shook his head. _Well, maybe that's okay. They'll fight their way through the guards who are surely there to stop me, and then I'll charge in when they find Fist and close the contract_.

He pulled his PET off his belt again, spun through messages and located his exchange with the Shadow Broker.

**I'm headed to Fist's place to make the hit. You want that quarian if she's still alive?**

Considering that answers usually came back instantly, the Broker seemed to actually be thinking about that. **Quarian's omnitool worth GCr 130,000 bonus. Geth cores worth GCr 40,000. Quarian finder worth GCr 100.**

**Got it. You still want this stuff delivered back to Barla Von?**

**Yes.**

**# # #**

When Fist had gotten the message from Sergeant Eason about the krogan, he had closed the club. He knew it would take some time to get disrupted customers happy, but the firefight outside had helped justify it. He knew his own operation had had nothing to do with that, so he cheerfully offered up all the camera recordings to the C-Sec VI that had called and asked for them.

But some of his own staff had been confused at the unexpected call to close off-hours; some of the back rooms were still booked and in use; and one didn't disturb such clientele lightly.

Godo, the quick-thinking salarian, had simply switched the lights off at the control box. Emergency lights in the back hall had switched on, and in just a few minutes, the denizens of the "backstage" club, in varieties of disheveled or hurriedly-donned attire trickled into the curving hallway. Fist had made the final sweep himself, offering apologies, rain checks and discounts to the more belligerant customers.

_Dead customers weigh ten times normal on a ledger_, he thought, _and they take years to pay off._

On the way back to his office, sealed the "backstage" area's access, and checked on the hit team in the back alley with a tap on his omnitool. Finally ready, though Zaf and Umi were still arguing like chipmunks.

**# # #**

Tali was still sitting at the table eating because she'd been snooping the network and it slowed down her eating. She didn't mind that it made her look like a slow eater; it meant she knew her environment better. But it was a minor surprise when the door to Fist's office opened, and his head poked out. "Hey. Is your suit EVA-ready?"

Tali looked up from her meal. _Was I so focused that I missed his walking by? _"What?"

"Is your suit EVA ready," he repeated. "There's a krogan bounty hunter on his way here who's after your head. Name's Wrex. Anyway, I know we can stop him, but the timing is important for you to meet the Shadow Broker, and you don't want to be seen getting there." He pointed to the door behind him. "That leads outside, but it's well within the Kiggs field. You'll need to crawl to the service area just spinward of the airlock. Your suit will help you if you lose your way, but…well…don't take this the wrong way…do you have your EVA card?"

"Certainly," Tali jumped up from the table, started toward him. "It's a Flotilla rating, but that's easy to translate. I'm EVA-4 in the Flotilla, but I haven't gotten a Council certification. It's just a formality compared to what we do, but–"

Fist interrupted, "Okay, whatever, but you really have to hurry. I know it'll take a few minutes for you to get over there, but it will keep you safe because hardly anybody knows you can get there from outside anyway." He had moved over to the door that led to his balcony, touched the key.

Tali stepped out the door, looking to both sides. "This is incredible! You have your own external access with its own Kiggs field?"

Fist put a hand on her shoulder to get her to move out of the door. "I wish. This is just a side effect of being so close to the ward arms."

"But I thought the field was emitted only to the inside."

"No, it's all over, out to about seven meters from the ward arm panels. Even the Keepers don't need air to work outside, but hardly anyone notices." He pointed to one of the four-legged aliens a hundred meters distant, slowly crawling its way along the outside of the Ward arm.

Tali gasped. "But that's…that not…the power consumption must be…"

Fist shook his head. "Don't worry about it. It works." He pointed spinward. "All you have to do is traverse this wall to the end. See that edge right there?"

Tali nodded. "I have emergency magnetic crampons, I just can't use them for more than..." she paused while manipulating the conversion controls by thought, "about fourty-three minutes. The power draw is too high. But I can make it over to _there_, no problem."

Fist pointed to the left. "Just past that corner is a thing like a long, flat umbrella. It's on a one-meter arm, so be careful if you get too close."

"A power and logic network node?" Tali drew the shape in the air before her with fingers on either hand. "Shaped like this, but about as big as me?"

"Yeah. Just past that is a singlet airlock. You can get back in there. The service corridor is accessible from two directions; the Shadow Broker will meet you there. I will get there as soon as I can. If I can shut down this mercenary quickly, I'll just walk over. It's actually a little farther for me inside than it will be for you outside. So don't worry if I don't get there quickly." Fist glanced nervously to his right, pointed back toward the Maw. "But be _really careful_, okay? If you lose your grip, you'll get pulled to the Maw. It's like automatic garbage disposal." He lit his omnitool gauntlet, read the message. "Aw, crap. It looks like that krogan is almost here. You'd better get going."

"Singlet airlock just past the PLN node," Tali chirped. "I'll see you when you get there." She grabbed the lateral bar and stepped over the edge of the balcony. She didn't hear the gunfire that erupted from the club's main floor as she did.

***** Glossary *****

ARA: Augmented Reality Appliance

Maw: A low-gravity point of attraction at the Nebula end of the Citadel. Its design intent seems to have been to keep the Traffic Control lanes free of debris. Its gravity well is not steep, but - in conjunction with the gravity of the white dwarf at the heart of the Widow Nebula - it does manage to keep the local space clean. Matter that falls into the Maw is directed into a chamber where all test probes have been destroyed. It is speculated that this is a molecular furnace that supplies the Citadel with raw materials for its own ongoing construction and maintenance.

PET: portable extranet terminal, an interstellar-capable device for extranet access even on remote worlds.

Singlet airlock: An airlock just large enough for a suited humanoid to fit inside. Its small size gives it a very quick cycle time.


	16. Chapter 16: Bar Fight

***** Bar Fight *****

Fist had watched the firefight outside the club with remote cameras for several seconds before realizing Shepard was part of it.

_No wonder they want this guy dead._

He started to panic, called Saren, but got a **Refused** message in reply. He tried again; same answer.

"Hey, those amateurs you sent down here are both dead! If you want this Shepard guy taken out, you'd better send in some real professionals _right now!_ VI, deliver this message immediately, this is life or death!" Two jabs at the Spectre's turian pride of professionalism should get a reply.

Then he turned and opened a closet, dragged out a pair of automated sentry turrets and began setting them up.

**# # # **

Officer Vakarian led the way across the plaza, past the stairs they had come up, and along the far edge of a dedicated viewing area lit in cool whites and cyan. A volus was bragging to an asari about the tour he'd taken of the _Destiny Ascension_ when a youngish girl in a Perret-Swissari gown backed out from behind a pillar without looking and crashed into Shepard, who had been doing more eavesdropping than watching where he was going.

Massing well over twice what the girl did, Shepard was only slightly deflected from his course, but the girl was bounced against the pillar, and then to the floor.

Shepard skidded to a halt, turned to help her up. "I'm terribly sorry," he said, "Are you okay?"

"Shepard! We have to go!" Vakarian pointed toward a door ahead, "Lives are at stake!"

"Thank you…uh…" The girl took his hand, climbed to her feet; wide-eyed, she glanced at her omnitool, and then back at him. "_Stephen_ Shepard? Commander Shepard of the Blitz?"

He cringed inwardly. Displa**iD** was a helpful app for dealing with authority figures, identifying oneself _as_ an authority figure, buying or selling things, and most social introductions, but it had started to become a nuisance with his minor celebrity status; people recognized his name and wanted to tell him all about their troubles or ask for his help.

"Uh…yes…but I can't stay to talk. I'm sorry." He stepped to his right, "Glad you're okay, though."

"No, wait! I don't want to slow you down, I just need to talk to you while you walk." The girl adjusted her outfit slightly, jumped to his side and paced him as he followed the turian. "I promise I'll leave as soon as you get to where you're going if I haven't already finished."

She paused to inhale – which in her mind would have given him the opportunity to ask her to leave if he really didn't want her there – and continued quickly, "I'm Emily Wong, I'm an investigative journalist working here on the Citadel for the Washington Post. I've been hunting for evidence of corruption and organized crime on the Citadel, but there are places I can't go—"

"And this is one of those places," Shepard interrupted. As they stepped through a door, Displa**iD** told him that what she was saying was true, but he held up a palm toward her without slowing. "I'm expecting a firefight; it may start at anytime. Without shields or armor, you really need to stay right here for now." He pointed at the public transit station as they passed. "Stay here…just email me, and I'll see what I can do."

Undeterred, she pressed her case as they passed a row of market stalls, "I was hoping you might share anything you find during your own investigation…"

Detective Vakarian stopped at the top of a set of stairs. "We're almost there," he said, "Ma'am, as a C-Sec officer, I have to ask you to stay here."

Shepard looked at the reporter. "_Investigation?_ What makes you think _I'm_ investigating anything?"

She smiled broadly, "We all saw you in the Council meeting. You did Earth proud! Hold their feet to the fire! Get transparency!" She smacked a fist into an open palm. "If anyone is going to uncover corruption here, it's you, hot on the trail of the evil Spectre!"

Out of the corner of his eye, Shepard saw a light-haired man coming up the stairs stop suddenly and turn to face them with an expression of disbelief.

Shepard held up both hands toward the girl, "Please stay here. I don't want anyone, especially civvies, to get injured or killed. You don't want to _be the blood_ on my reputation, do you?"

Tugging at the clingy garment, she look surprised and hurt.

He continued, "Look, no promises, but if I find anything that I think can help you, it's yours. We're all in this together, right?"

She smiled at him. "Thanks, Commander. I'll make it worth your while. And I'll wait for you in the observation lounge." She pointed back toward where they had first met. "I'll also leave you a tag on Displa**iD**."

"Thanks," he said, "And take care."

As Emily turned and started away, Shepard felt a hand briefly on his shoulder just before he was pushed. "Aw, you ol' softie. Can't turn away a pretty face?"

He turned; Ash was grinning at him.

He shook his head, turned and started down the stairs. "I was at fault there: I crashed into her. I didn't want to be rude. I have heaps of respect for the fourth estate, but she was going to get shot." He looked back at the turian. "Come on. Is this where we're going?"

"Yeah, let's go!" Officer Vakarian, pistol still out, leapt down the stairs two at a time.

As Ash followed, Shepard noticed that the man he'd seen a moment ago was still staring at them…at _him_.

There wasn't time to think more about it as they reached the bottom of the stairs, made a right turn and ran through a crowded marketplace. Officer Vakarian, in his official capacity, was noticed and avoided as he ran with his sidearm out, but the two Alliance soldiers trailing him – and bristling with weapons – were drawing gaping stares, and even a pointed hand or two.

As they stepped through another door, Shepard's ARO reminded him where he was. "This is the taxi stand!" He looked around for evidence of the firefight and saw none. "Shouldn't there be investigation teams crawling all over the place?"

Officer Vakarian put his back to the wall by the door. "No, that's low-tech," he said quickly, "Records have been collected and verified and stored in at least three and possibly eleven different places to maintain integrity." He seemed annoyed, "C-Sec's job isn't just to protect and serve, it's to keep this sort of thing out of people's way. There are lives to get on with…and appearances to keep up." Leaning around the corner, he glanced quickly at the entrance to Chora's Den. "Never mind. We have a problem. It looks like Chora's Den is shut down."

"Fist knows we're coming," Ash said.

"Or he thinks the krogan is," Shepard answered. He scowled. "We're not here to kill him."

Vakarian wasn't sure if the humans understood sarcasm, but he couldn't resist asking, "Do _you_ want to tell him that? Or should I?"

"Umm…you tell him," Shepard checked his weapon's status, replaced it on his SmartPak.

Vakarian squinted. Now he wasn't sure if the humans really _didn't_ understand sarcasm…or if they really _really_ did. "Sorry…uh…that was meant to be a joke."

"I know. We'll sort it out later." Shepard said, "Holster your weapons, but shields at max…let me see if I can get in there without anyone dying." He replaced the Avenger-V on his SmartPak.

Ash looked down at her shotgun but did not secure it. "Should the Detective and I wait here so we don't seem like an expeditionary force?"

Shepard nodded. "Excellent idea." He stepped around the corner as his shields flashed indication of full recharge. He spoke over his shoulder, "Watch my back. Keep an eye out for that krogan, too."

Walking to his left along the aircar passage, he could see the door to the club was open, but the inside was dark. "Hello," he called, "I'm Commander Shepard of the Alliance vessel _Normandy_, conducting an official investigation about the attack on Eden Prime. Is anyone here who can answer a few questions for me?"

"We're closed, mister," said a male human voice. He sounded uncertain.

Putting his left hand on the doorframe, Shepard stopped just outside. His ARO switched to Combat mode, enhancing his vision, outlining and tagging threats.

_Looks like about eight guys, _he thought. He triple-tapped his ID badge, displaying the hologram. "Well if you really mean it, you ought to close the door, so people don't think you're open. But that's okay, I didn't expect to get service, I just need to talk to someone named _Fist_. Is he here? Or can you get a message to him? It's time-sensitive and really important."

"Uh…he's not here now. But—"

"We're closed, human!" bellowed a krogan voice. "Go away!" The sound of a shotgun erupted, but the weapon had been aimed at the ceiling.

"Hope you had fun with that," growled a turian voice. Detective Vakarian was suddenly behind Shepard, his voice amplified by his C-Sec armor's taking over the station's local PA system. "_Attention, this is Officer Garrus Vakarian of Citadel Security. This is an official C-Sec investigation, and I'm ordering everyone within the sound of my voice to throw down any weap—_"

"No! Go away!" The shotgun fired again.

"…_or I will be authorized to use deadly force_. I repeat, this is Officer Garrus Vakarian of Citadel Security…"

As the turian continued, Kaidan and Richard ran up behind them. Kaidan asked, "Sounds like it isn't going well. Did the krogan beat us here?"

"No," said Ash.

"So what are these guys about?" Rich asked.

"They're about to get their asses kicked." Heavy footsteps sounded behind them; the krogan that Ash, Kaidan, and Richard had encountered earlier was lumbering their way quickly. "Mind if I join in? I love a good fight." Massive shotgun in one hand, and a highly customized assault carbine/grenade launcher in the other, Wrex shouldred past Officer Vakarian and looked quickly around the club.

"Hey, that's not C-Sec!" came a cry from one of the other krogan, "That's Urdnot Wrex, the merc who was in here before!"

"Time to _repaint the place_, boys; get 'em!"

Shepard and Vakarian had just enough time to get back in cover before shrapnel erupted from the doorway and Wrex's armor.

"Now you're talkin' my language!" Wrex brought up the carbine and thoomped grenades over the barricades; two humans and two batarians were thrown from cover. The carbine chattered heavily as Wrex charged into the club, followed by Shepard ("What are you doing?!") and Vakarian ("Stop! Hold your fire!")

The krogan slid into cover just inside the entrance, fired the carbine up at the ceiling and over the projector housing. The sniper hiding behind it seemed to jump up with a spray of blood, falling a couple of meters to the floor.

Officer Vakarian, just outside the door, held the control on his suit so the PA system would continue to amplify his voice, "_Urdnot Wrex! Stand down! C-Sec is on scene! You have not been authorized to use deadly force!_" He made a break for the next available cover, counterclockwise around the room. Having thus interposed himself between the opposing forces, he shouted, "_All combatants, hold your fire and put down your weapons!_"

Shepard turned in time to see Wrex dive after the turian, tackling a thug who'd been hiding behind the cover and about to shoot Vakarian in the back. A sickening crunch followed.

Shepard sprinted across to where the turian had stopped, sliding into cover behind a barrier that seemed to have been put up near the passage to the restrooms and back office. **C-Sec Officer under fire**, noted his ARO, **Backup is inbound. ETA: Four minutes. **"I doubt we can just wait for four minutes," he said toward Officer Vakarian.

Having received the same notification, the turian made a sort of grinding sound. "It's a joke. It'll be more like ten minutes," he answered. "With that damned krogan here blasting everything in sight, everyone will be dead by the time they get here."

Shepard checked his ARO's tactical display, a circle in the lower right corner showing him where people were and identifying as many of them as it could. Alenko, Jenkins and Williams had made it to the armored side of the barricade to their left; Williams and Jenkins were firing into the short hallway. They stopped suddenly, and Alenko tossed a Lift field into the confined space, stopping the hostile fire from it. Richard ran forward, weapon out.

Meanwhile, Wrex continued his rampage around the circular room. He had gotten ahead of Shepard and Vakarian, and was using his shotgun as a club on the krogan charging at him. The smaller krogan took the hit with his armored skull, rolled away from the hit and out of club range, raised his own shotgun and rapidly fired the semi-auto shotgun into Wrex's torso.

Having fought in close quarters for centuries, Wrex had his move choreographed: he knew his enemy's face wasn't externally armored. Shields and barrier protected him against the incoming fire; his armor blazed with hot shrapnel as he brought his own shotgun – still in motion after impact – around to complete a circle and snapped the trigger.

Being a short-range weapon, the shotgun's 80cm-long barrel was actually a truncated cone, its wide end at the muzzle, and the chunky mass of technology at the other end was a ring-array of 38 linear accelerators. As each linac launched a fragment of C60, the resulting circular pattern blew an 8-centimeter hole through the krogan's head and armor that also expanded with distance from the barrel. Krogan blood splattered across the room as if fired from the shotgun itself.

Simultaneously plastered with krogan entrails and skidding on blood, Richard stumbled and fell, crashing into a table and chairs. The young soldier coughed and spluttered as he struggled to his feet, trying to get the metallic, acrid taste out of his mouth. Looking at his own hands in surprise, he backed against the wall, shaking. "Help!" he looked to his right, back towards his squadmates, "I'm hit!"

Shepard noticed the younger krogan was still fighting, even managing to pick itself up and preparing to charge Wrex, but likely not nearly strong enough to actually do any damage.

As he fitted the rifle to his shoulder, Shepard's ARO automatically switched to the scope view for his right eye, leaving his left to see the general scene. The weapon's VI tagged and tracked the vulnerable points of the krogan unfortuanate enough to be in the crosshairs.

The shot deflected the krogan sideways, and called attention to Shepard. The smaller, younger krogan changed dirctions, thumping Wrex on the back as he passed, heading for the human.

Shepard adjusted his aim to the damaged head and face, snapped the trigger. The direct hit slowed the krogan briefly, but increased the focus of his anger.

At 4x, Shepard had time to check his tactical display as he snapped the trigger again. As Shepard's rifle linac launched its payload of C60, Vakarian noticed the exchange and sprayed the krogan with his assault rifle. True to its name, the weapon's overpowered linac thundered as the krogan was covered with bullet holes; he seemed to finally stop thrashing only when he collapsed.

Shepard's VI had identified that the turian was using a Haliat weapon – very powerful, but available only on the black market – before he realized the other team had subdued the three remaining humans in the corridor that probably led to Fist's office. Two of them – a human and a salarian – were immobilized in POWlocks, the third was collapsed against the wall, an explosion of blood and brains above him.

Richard, however, was still trembling. His expression was one Shepard had seen before and recognized.

The corporal's pistol was on the floor near the body, and he seemed to have been pointing at it a moment ago, but his hand was lowered, index finger still extended. "He…he was just a kid…like me! And I shot him! His ear blew off the other side and I watched it pull his brains with it!" He recoiled, seemed to recover, "I…I can't do this. Sir, I'm…I have to go home. I'm going home. Send me home."

"Use your omnitool to control your suit," Ash said. "Boost your Focus and—"

Richard shook his head and waved his arms almost as if shivering. "No no no no. I can't…I can't do this. I'm not…I don't…I…" He looked at the youngish man on the floor with the profusely-bleeding eyebrow and inhaled loudly. He shouted at the body, "I'm sorry!"

Ash quickly put an arm across Richard's shoulders and turned him away and out of the corridor. "Come on," she said, "Let's get you out of here." Her omnitool lit as she took over control of his suit's medical interface, modulated his neurochemistry to calm him down.

Shepard spoke toward Ash's back, "Call me when you get back to the ship."

"Can I just take him to the Clinic? I can be right back here."

"Sierra Hotel, Williams. Let me know when you're on your way here." Shepard nodded, turned and looked at Kaidan and then Wrex.

The krogan was still looking after the departing humans. "Well, that was weird. What's with him?"

"Apparently he didn't know he was a conscientious objector when he signed up," Kaidan said.

"A what?"

"Doesn't want to kill people."

Wrex shook his head. "Never would have guessed. He was ready to take _me_ on, down at C-Sec."

"But he wasn't supposed to _kill_ you."

The krogan shrugged. "Well where's the fun in _that_?"

_Does he think that's funny? _ Shepard glanced down at the two prisoners, shaking his head. "These guys aren't professionals. They're civvies."

Wrex looked up. "So what? They shot at _us_," he said, casually raising his shotgun to indicate the nearer.

Shepard's right hand shot out and shoved the muzzle of the shotgun aside. "We don't kill unarmed prisoners," he snapped.

"And they're under arrest for aggravated assault with intent," Officer Vakarian sounded angry. "If my car weren't still parked near the clinic, I'd take 'em in and book 'em myself."

Wrex, unfazed at having his shotgun pushed asided, had not fired. He looked oddly at the human and shrugged. "Suit yourself."

Shepard turned to the door, toggled its holographic key. The holo flashed red, indicating the door was locked. He scowled, "I'm not in the mood," and made a fist with his left hand, then pointed with his fingers extended. The lock connected itself to his omnitool with an arc of blue-white electricity, and noisily emitted a puff of gray smoke.

"Hm," Wrex said idly, "I'll bet locks everywhere live in abject fear of _you_."

**# # #**

Benezia noticed the display indicating a relentless VI attempting to leave a message. She touched it.

**Fist: Hey, those amateurs you sent down here are both dead! If you want this Shepard guy taken out, you'd better send in some real professionals **_**right now!**_

She tapped it to accept the call, but the VI switched to video mute blue.

"Saren. Shepard has killed Temmer and Eldil. Fist left a message but isn't answering."

"What?" The augmented turian pulled a display down from the cockpit's low ceiling, tapped its side and read what Benezia has just seen. "That idiot!"

"Fist didn't fail you. Temmer and Eldil did. If you still mean to kill Shepard on the Citadel, you must act quickly and send help to Fist."

Saren tapped his collar, activating his comm. "Jarrik! Falus! Answer immediately!"

Benezia turned slowly and watched the Spectre glance around at the displays as if looking for something.

Saren tapped his collar toggle again. "Temmer! Eldil! Answer me!"

Benezia gestured for her VVR interface, summoning records of all their Citadel resources, and sending instructions for them to get to Chora's Den as fast as possible. **First to kill Commander Shepard will be awarded 1.4 million credits and be placed on 4000 GCr/month retainer.**

Saren turned to the asari. "Get everyone down there now!"

"I have. But the Citadel is a large place; they may not be able to arrive in force. They certainly won't be coordinated. But I've put a bounty that should get them motivated. We will have to wait and see." She leaned back in her seat, folded her arms, and watched the display as responses began to come in.

**# # #**

In Tali's mind, stepping from the balcony to the wall was a simple as getting down on all fours, it just happened to be perpendicular to the floor she had been standing on. She put her right leg over the railing and secured it to the wall. The grips on her palms and toes activated, calibrating for the material.

Traversing to her right, she looked back at Fist, who was watching with what her suit VI was telling her was genuine concern.

She nodded toward him. "See? It's easy. Don't worry, I'll be fine."

The thick human formed a ring with two phalanges of one hand. One of her suit VIs identified it as an affirmation. "Good," he said. And then he was gone.

Tali looked to her right, into the Widow Nebula. _A room with a view_, she thought. Though her lifelog cameras snapped stills as the controlling VI found interesting compositions, she still found herself thinking, _I should try to bring Keenah back here, this is really a great scene._

She continued to her right, careful to choose hand- and footholds recommended by one of her VIs. With all the techno-rubble that covered the outer surface of the station, it required both the skill of a rock-climber and the ability to see around corners. Still trying to enjoy the view as she crawled, her progress was slow, moving one appendage at a time, verifying contact lock before moving another. The faint, hellish glow of the distant Maw kept her mindful: S_low but steady keeps you alive_.

Extending her hand to the right, she felt a transition, as if she'd reached out of a pool of water. She pulled her hand back, reached out again experimentally. The transition was distinctive.

_Keelah_, she thought, _the Kiggs field boundary intersects the hull of the station here! _It was extraordinarily dangerous; the boundary of air and vacuum would impart different vectors on different parts of her body as she crossed it; without a tether, and even with an enviro-suit, losing her grip here could mean death if no one came to rescue her before her air supply and rebreather ran out.

Unless she fell into that Maw.

One of her hypervisors automatically tasked a couple of VIs with detecting and displaying the approximate boundary as a 3D wireframe on her faceplate, making it easier for her to cross the boundary safely. Calibrated to the location of her eyes, it was extremely helpful, even if not wholly convincing.

Her next obstacle was not the node, but the surface of the station changing direction…and she would have to move sideways around a corner, as if crawling around a right-angled cliff.

Looking quickly from one side to the other required pulling her head back to avoid grinding her faceplate against the corner. Fist being nervous made more sense now, but she was getting worried about being able to reach the meeting point in time.

Firmly secured to the wall again, she looked to her right, and saw the PLN node…on the other side of two more Kiggs field transitions. _No wonder Fist doesn't care about his easy access…this is dangerous!_

A glance "up" along the curve of the Presidium was only slightly helpful when she realized the station might have enough mass to attract her back to it if she wasn't actually pushed away from it. A second thought made her scowl. Releasing her right hand, she picked a flake of damaged material off her suit's left shoulder, held it out at arm's length, and let it loose with as little motion as possible. The fragment slid almost immediately towards the Maw.

Tali sighed. _That sure explains why the Citadel looks so shiny. Gravity-fed debris collection._ She shivered, looked toward the blackness, glowing faintly in the infrared.

_No_, she thought. _I am not dying here because of something stupid and preventable_. Reaching into a pouch on her left leg, she withdrew a thick, meter-long cable that wiggled and spun crazily even in the gravitational field pulling toward her feet.

She flicked her wrist several times in a whiplike motion, stretching the cable out to five meters' length. She could feel her left foot had come loose, and took a moment to secure it again. By doing so, the now-sticky cable had managed to get tangled and stuck to the wall and her suit.

Holding one end of the cable in place with a finger of her left hand, she twisted it, returning the cable to its short, unsticky state. Securing her left hand again, she whipped the cable to its maximum extension, and then flicked it toward the pylon holding the PLN node in place. The end coiled around the pylon three complete times before it ran out of length.

Tying a one-handed bowline, Tali secured the cable to the integrated harness of her suit and continued her translation to the right, feeling much safer with a tether.

**# # #**

The door opened, revealing what looked at first like an empty room. Two humans peeked around a crate and aimed pistols at them.

"Stop where you are," said the first, "Don't come any closer."

"Warehouse workers," Kaidan read from DisplaiD. "All the real guards must be dead."

"Stay back or we'll shoot," the other added.

Shepard made eye contact with the one who had just spoken, then looked deliberately at the two men in POWlocks, then at Wrex, and the krogan's shotgun. Finally, he looked at the man and his tiny pistol. He waved a thumb over his shoulder into the corridor. "I'll bet those two guys behind me would really appreciate it if you took them out of here and the bunch of you all find someplace else to work."

The two men looked at their fellows, bound hand and foot with three interconnected rods, then back at the krogan, and then at each other.

"Yeah…yeah, right," the first agreed, tossing his pistol toward the door at the other end of the room. "That's a good idea."

"Yeah…I never liked Fist anyway," the other agreed. He started to pocket his pistol, until he noticed Kaidan shaking his head and looking toward the far door. Reluctantly, he threw the weapon after the other.

"Detective, can you get these guys out of here," Shepard waved a thumb at the salarian and human who had survived their assault on the club. "Grab the bar between their hands and it'll relax the bar at their feet into a flexible mode."

"That would make my boss happy…that I didn't leave civilians in here." The turian looked uncertainly at him. "You sure you can handle Fist yourself?"

Shepard raised an eyebrow. "I'm not _handling_ Fist by myself."

The turian flared his fringe. "You know what I mean. But point taken. Backup should be here in a moment, so I'll be right back."

It was convenient that each of the warehouse workers had to continuously hold the bar to keep the foot restraint in its flexible mode; it kept them out of mischief, too. Kaidan lingered at the opposite end of the short corridor, watching them; Shepard and Wrex turned and went back through the ready room.

Wrex explained patiently, "It would have been quicker to just kill them."

"Shooting people isn't always the answer," Kaidan answered.

"Not always," the krogan agreed. "Sometimes you have to blow them up."

"You're incorrigible," Kaidan shook his head. He tried to change the subject, "There's nobody else here. I wonder where the dancers went?"

Shepard stopped at the door, picking up the pair of Kessler-IIs. He handed one to Kaidan and started feeding the other into his disassembler. He turned to Wrex as he did. "I thought this might be a problem. Maybe you're kidding, but I'm here to find a quarian. I don't want you killing my leads before I find her and get the info I need."

Wrex leaned his head close to Shepard's and growled, "Then as one warrior to another, I'll give you fair warning. I _will_ kill Fist."

Shepard was not going to be intimidated. He looked the krogan in his nearer eye and leaned closer. "Not until I say. If you're not okay with that, then you'd better leave now."

There was an uncomfortable pause. Shepard could smell the krogan's breath; it reminded him of battery acid.

Wrex snorted, shook his head. "You going to _say_ after we find this quarian of yours?"

"Assuming she's not dead or seriously injured, or missing her omnitool, or...whatever. In which case I need him alive to help me get as much evidence against Saren as possible."

"Saren?" The krogan leaned slightly away as he stood fully upright again. "You're hunting Saren Arterius the Spectre?" He turned to Kaidan and nodded. "So you were serious," he said with a nod. He turned back to Shepard. "Okay human, we have a deal." His mood seemed to lighten; he turned to Kaidan, "Smell that? Fresh blood mixed with stale booze."

"Okay, this looks like the last door," Shepard said. "Light 'em up." He flattened himself against the wall, spiked the lock. The door opened haltingly; Wrex stepped into the doorway and shoved the doors apart. Another set of doors was only a couple of meters beyond.

Shepard checked the corners and walls for panels that concealed weapons; his combat Thru-View showed no threats. _Okay…then maybe _**this**_ looks like the last door_, he thought_._ He casually spiked the door lock and stepped back, gesturing to Wrex and then the door.

**# # #**

Fist had been watching the team advance on his office, and cursing his staff, his luck, and his deity.

Finally, the 8-cm "security" doors protested with a metallic squeal as the krogan shoved the inner doors apart. "Why do I have to do everything myself," Fist muttered. Activating the sentry turrets, he flipped the armored desk forward and dove behind it.

The two automated weapons chattered only a few rounds before exploding in brilliant sparks. Thinking they had malfunctioned, he jumped to one, saw its display was not only dark, but looked as though it had been fried. Raising his assault rifle, he fired a continuous stream of bullets over the desk as he sprang across the room to the other turret; its fate had been the same: Overloaded.

He looked up in time to see the red-armored krogan aim an assault carbine each of the turrets and launch grenades. Though his shields kept him from being instantly killed, the explosion threw him at the desk; he hit it at waist-level, and flipped over it, knocking the wind out of him as he landed on his back.

Fist tried to sit up, found himself facing the two humans and a krogan, all with weapons trained on him. He scrambled back to the desk. "Wait! Don't kill me; I surrender!"

Shepard left the safety on his pistol as he raised it, but the ultracapacitor array whined menacingly. "You got a deal, pal. I only need to know _one thing_. Where's the quarian?"

Fist kept his hands up, his head turned away in a cringe. "She's not here, I don't know where she is…and that's the truth!"

Still two meters away, Shepard aimed carefully at the man's ear. _Technically, that probably_ is _true_, he realized.

"He's lying," Wrex said instantly.

Shepard knew he had the upper hand; bravado would probably do the trick. "You'd better start explaining before I lose my temper."

"The quarian isn't here. Said she'd only meet with the Shadow Broker personally."

"I thought the Shadow Broker only worked through agents," Kaidan said.

Wrex answered without taking his eyes off Fist. "Far as I know. I got my link device from a courier." He inclined his head slightly toward the PET device on his belt.

Shepard took a step back, lowered his sidearm, gestured for Fist to get up.

The man balked.

"Get up," Shepard said. "This isn't an execution."

"Well, at least not yet," Wrex grinned.

Shepard glanced at the krogan warily.

As Fist stood, he looked quickly at the markings on the humans' uniforms. "You're…rogue? Former Alliance?"

"Not a chance," Shepard said. "I'm Commander Stephen Shepard, Executive Officer of the Alliance SSV _Normandy_, conducting an investigation for my Captain, David Anderson. But there's a _Spectre_ named Saren who we think _may_ have gone rogue, and I'm trying to find evidence he led an attack on a human colony, Eden Prime. A few of _your_ men were in the Medical clinic, roughing up the doctor. She had treated a quarian who may have the evidence we're looking for." He took a step closer. "And you sent this quarian to the Shadow Broker?"

Fist shook his head quickly. "Nobody meets the Shadow Broker. Ever. Even I don't know his true identity, let alone his location. But she didn't know that. So I _arranged a meeting_." Fist realized he was probably being recorded, and adjusted his story, "When she shows up, it'll be…_Saren's men_ waiting for her."

Shepard stepped closer to the dark-haired man, their eyes locked. "Give me the location. Now."

Fist pointed to his left. "Here on the wards, the service corridor by the markets."

"The one by the…taxi stand?"

Fist nodded, "Right. She's supposed to meet them right now. You can make it if you hurry."

"Am I just supposed to forget your part in all this?"

"Hey, I came clean about the quarian, didn't I? I have my own problems now. The Shadow Broker wants me dead! I have to disappear. Forget about me. I'm a ghost."

"You're not my concern…" Shepard started.

"Don't worry, you'll never see me again."

"Glad to oblige," Wrex pulled his shotgun off his back, started to bring it around to where he could use it.

"Wait!" Shepard extended a hand in front of the krogan. "We don't have the quarian yet."

"You better hurry if you want to get there before them." Fist pointed out the door to his right. "Go now!"

"We can't really take him with us," Kaidan looked at Fist, then at Shepard.

Wrex leaned closer to Shepard, hands in a shrug as if pleading. "This is one of those times when _you just kill him_, see?"

"Commander, I'm on my way back," Williams' voice was in Shepard's "radio ears." "Are you still at that club?"

Shepard grinned to himself. "We are, and your timing couldn't be better, Williams. Double-time it over here."

"On my way, sir."

Shepard turned to Kaidan, pointed at Fist. "You stay here with him. Don't let him leave."

"I'll start packing," Fist said, activating another DCE terminal near the wall.

Shepard raised his weapon. "No, I'd rather you not. Why don't you just sit down and relax until we get back. Then we'll talk about what you're going to pack."

Fist put his hands up to his shoulders and stepped back from the terminal, made his way to the chair without taking his eyes off Shepard.

"And whatever you pack, you can't take it with you," Wrex added.

Shepard touched his thumb to the middle finger tip for RTM. _Alenko, see what you can get off his computer about the organization he was running,_ he subvocalized.

The Lieutenant's eyes moved as he read the message on his ARO, looked at Shepard and nodded once.

Shepard turned to the krogan. "Come on. You and I need to get the alley to save the quarian."

"You at least gonna let me kill _Saren's guys_?"

"I'm not your commanding officer, but I'll bet they'd appreciate it if you didn't. Hopefully we'll connect with Williams." He started through the ready room, looking backwards and waving toward himself. "Come on, time's short." As he walked through the ready room, he put two fingers to his ear, "Williams, this is Shepard. Do you remember where that alley was? The one that Detective Vakarian took us past on the way here?"

There was a pause. "Sorry, sir; say again?"

"Do you remember where the alleyway was? By the taxi stand?"

"Uh…no, sir. I'm in the markets now. Want me to stop at the taxi stand?"

"Excellent, Chief. We'll be—" As he stepped out of the corridor and into the club proper, he was cut off as a shot hit his shields and overpowered them. The tungsten round that remained shattered the outer layer of his helmet, vaporizing on contact with the "brilliantized" metamaterial, but still imparting a significant vector.

As his head started to snap back, the intelligent armor slowed the hyperextension of his neck to a stop before it could do serious damage, and signaled his neurotronics to release appropriate antigens.

This didn't prevent him being thrown to his back and into cover.

"Commander?" Ash started running. "Shepard? Come in! Alenko, can you see the XO?"

*** Glossary ***

Displa**iD**: a social application that displays the ID of the user to any device that requests it. Used for commerce as well.

PLN: Power and Logic Network, the de facto standard for civil power and data transmission and storage. PLN nodes provide wired/wireless transmission, storage, and re-transmission of data and power.

VVR: Visual Virtual Reality: an interface that uses only optics, gaze tracking, and retina imaging.


	17. Chapter 17: Alley

A/N: Sorry for the missed release last month; the technical term is a blivit, and I had few of them hit my inbox all at once. (It would surprise me if it doesn't happen again.) But I'm back on schedule...saving the galaxy! Also, I've noticed that each chapter has to be refreshed each time. I will probably have to take this down and combine the chapters into "Phases" or "Parts" or something, just to make it easier to manage.

***** Alley *****

Wrex saw the mercenaries as they opened fire on the human, saw him do a sort of back flip as the antimateriel round took down his shields, threw him over a crate and back towards the door.

_Didn't even have his gun out_, he thought. _Careless._

His own weapon was already on target, pounding a familiar tempo into his shoulder. The turian with the powerful sniper rifle shuddered as the Revenant hurled a dozen rounds at him, obliterating his shields and splattering turian blood across the wall behind him.

Still holding the trigger, Wrex panned his fire across the room toward the two other turians; one without the face tattoos that they usually wore, and one wearing lightweight armor. Bareface tried to dive for cover; his shields managed to repel five of the seven shots Wrex got off at him. Still firing, but able to ignore the excessive heat the weapon was putting out, Wrex turned on the third and found his fire being deflected away by a biotic barrier.

Wrex grinned to himself as he held the trigger. _Always a good day when I can kill one of those things_, he thought.

From behind him came the sound of a biotic field and grunt of effort. Two humans rose into the air, curling and gasping in the power of a Lift field. Wrex's right eye saw the biotic human drop back down into cover and draw a pistol, then pop back up and fire on the door where more humans were pouring into the club like hatchlings trying to be first to the teats.

And that human _Shepard_ was back on his feet already, Avenger rifle in hand, apparently aiming without holding the weapon up to his eyes. It would have been more impressive if it wasn't foiling his aim; he wasn't making any head shots. _Sloppy_, he thought.

Shaking his head, Wrex stopped to let his own rifle cool. He moved quickly to the left around the circular room, smelling where other aliens were, hearing them running across the corridor outside, and realizing the biotic human hadn't bothered to fire on the two other humans he'd stranded in his Lift field. He fired a couple of quick bursts at them, then decided not to waste any more ammo.

**# # #**

Fist watched one of the humans and the krogan head out, trying to think what it would take to buy off this Alliance human left to watch over him, or if there was a way to overpower him, get critical data off the office DCE, wipe the system and get himself safely away.

The Alliance Lieutenant walked over to the chair where Fist was seated, and illuminated his omnitool.

Fist did his best to look terrified. "You just know that krogan is going to kill me, right? I've seen him before, and I know his work. He's relentless. You heard what he said."

Kaidan turned to him, squinting. "A quarian came to you for help, and you sold her out?" The biotic shook his head. "I may agree with _some_ of what Terra Firma says, but you've got…_issues_."

The sound of gunfire from the club startled both of them; the Alliance man touched a holographic key on his arm as his helmet assembled itself into place. "No...what's wrong? He just walked out." He seemed to hear something else on the suit radio, and ran to the ready room.

Fist didn't hesitate. He sprang from the chair, pulled an OSD off the chain around his neck and jammed it into the terminal. "Operation: Apocalypse," he said to the machine. Grabbing a pistol he kept in his desk, he armed it and hurried through the damaged security doors, stopping to peek into the ready room to be sure it was clear. He had seen one of the Alliance soldiers kill one of his men, but there had been too much to watch at the time to see who had done whom.

Nothing in the ready room moved; Fist could hear gunfire out in the club. From the still-open door, he could see a body in the accessway; the three soldiers had moved out into the club proper. A closer look at the body showed it was Flanders.

Fist blinked and squinted. "Ah, Jack," he said with a shake of his head, "I trust you found death to be as enlightening as you had hoped. But before you go, I have one last job for you."

He grimaced as he grabbed the man by the ankles.

**# # #**

Shepard was struggling to his feet as Kaidan entered the accessway. The krogan was already out in the club, his oversized assault rifle noisily putting holes in things.

Kaidan asked, "Who _are_ these guys? I thought we ran Fist out of hired guns."

"Get up and fight," Shepard said, mostly to himself. He waved Kaidan off. "I'm okay. Go! Go!"

Kaidan turned away to the right, saw two humans running to get behind the barricade Fist's men had used earlier; he lobbed a Lift field at them.

"Lieutenant!" Ash was still waiting for a reply. "I've got three bad guys across the aircar corridor…wait, make that four. What's your twenty?"

Kaidan dropped back into cover, drawing and checking his pistol. "We're still in the club; Shepard took one to the head, but I think he'll be all right. That mercenary is making a mess of the place. No, wait!" He watched the two Lifted humans tumble out of the field as the krogan fired at them. "Who are these guys?"

"I don't know, but they're shooting at _each other_!"

Of the armed men that Ash could see in the skycar corridor – now five of them – some were forming alliances and shooting mostly across the open space. A skycar that raced by at exactly the wrong time took a round; one burst of shrapnel jumped from the near side, but it was out of sight before anyone could see its fate.

One of the aggressors tossed something that bounced into the markets where Ash was running for the door.

"Grenade!" she screamed.

Civilians scattered to the walls, shopkeepers dove behind their counters. The explosive had stopped near the middle of a walkway, so when it detonated, it covered the nearer kiosks and storefronts with shrapnel and fire.

"Incendiary!" Ash put a hand to her ear, "Civilian distress, nine-one-one, fire in the ward shops, this location! Emergency! Emergency! Vee-eye sign my name and repeat on local channels!" Trusting her comm VI to handle contacting the authorities, she looked immediately to the fire extinguisher on the wall when her helmet HUD VI outlined it in red and flashed the highlight. She sprinted to it, yanked it away, and ran back to the fires...only to take a round in the back from the pistol of the man who had tossed the grenade to draw her out.

Her massively overpowered shields reduced it to something that felt like a fingerpoke in the back. Gritting her teeth in a complex emotional mélange, she stepped right and turned so she could see the door as she sprayed the fires with the extinguisher. A glance out the door showed her assailant dropping back into cover: a turian.

With the nearer fires out, she looked quickly around and spotted a turian shopkeeper spritzing his counter with a hand-sized can of something. Ash left the extinguisher on the counter in front of him. "Here, use this!" She bolted for the door to the taxi stand.

Crashing to a stop next to the door, she she barked across the skycar corridor, "You're shooting civilians? _Civilians?!_" Harpoon rifle out, she switched to infrared, sighted through the half-wall, and elevated the barrel just enough to aim over its top, then changed her mind. Drawing her one grenade out of its slow-but-tiny specialized printer, she hurled it across the chasm, detonating it as soon as it hit the far wall. Bluish paste and an arm flew over the half wall and fell out of sight.

Amazingly, the thing was still moving. Watching the alien's motions as interpreted by the scope's VI, she squeezed the trigger just as he was popping up to shoot again; a bright red line connected the muzzle briefly with the wall behind the spiky head, which snapped back as he seemed to throw his weapon over his shoulder.

Her shields deflected another incoming shot; out of habit, she ducked back under the half-wall.

_Someone sure as hell kicked over a beehive_, she thought. _Maybe messing with this guy Fist was a mistake._

**# # #**

Having realized the Alliance people would be more likely to notice if Jack's body - the only one left in the accessway - was gone, Fist had waited until the firefight had moved far enough away that he could reach the nearer fallen man in the club (who was more his size anyway,) and dragged him all the way to the office.

As well as being a brownette instead of Jack's blond, the man had been wearing some light torso armor, which was a pleasant surprise. After swapping clothes with him, Fist pulled a length of tether out of the Emergency EVA rescue kit next to the door just inside the Kiggs field, clipped it to the belt on the corpse and lowered it over the edge of the balcony.

At first, the station gravity kept it going directly down, but after he had about six or seven meters of cable paid out, the body started to slide to his left until it was hanging outside the practically-invisible Kiggs field. There was no bright blue delineator effect like they used in the big docking bays.

Fist didn't know what the various rooms of his club had been used for until humans arrived, but the bureaucracy had let him lease it for a reduced rate if he cleaned it up. He thought briefly about the years he had spent carving the useless ancient equipment out of it, "fighting" with the little buglike keepers until they stopped trying to put it back in, subletting the space in the market area to the gray market sellers and trying to build up some capital.

And now it was all going away. Well, maybe not going away, but being traded for a lot of money. Enough to buy his retirement, anyway.

Tying the end of the cable to the balcony rail, he glanced over his shoulder, pulled the pistol out of his pocket and fired at the cable and missed.

He fired again, and again.

_I don't have time for this_, he thought.

He set the pistol on the floor, and used both hands to pull the cable back up a few meters, grabbed the gun and fired at it again. The cable parted silently, and the body began to drift steadily toward the distant Maw.

He dropped the other end; lightened enough to be affected by the Maw more quickly, the cable drifted out to the side, waving in slow-motion.

He ran back into the office, saw the script had finished, grabbed the OSD crystal and reattached it to the chain around his neck.

Standing at the balcony again, he clambered over the edge, hyperventilating as he went. He was proud of the level of fitness he maintained, and now it was paying off.

Reaching the marks he had left to warn himself, he took a deep, final breath and leapt off the wall. Falling through the field and into vacuum with the acceleration provided by a mere 0.2 gees (and the breath that he exhaled in the opposite direction of where he wanted to go,) it took almost thirty seconds before he landed within meters of a unusually short, wide singlet airlock that would let him into the service areas.

Knowing all this didn't prevent his heart from trying to pound as if he were running a race; when the cramped airlock pressurized and opened its inner door, he stepped inside, found a dark, quiet corner, and breathed for a few minutes to calm himself back down.

Calling in a favor would get him a ride to Ilium, and he'd be set up with the money from his Tunguska account.

_Might even get me a pet asari like Saren did._

**# # #**

Shepard sprayed NNP with his left hand, put two fingers to his ear, "We've got a lot of unrecoverable dead here. Williams, where are you?"

"Just outside the club," she said, "I can see that krogan. Are you staying out of his way?"

Kaidan answered, "Pff. More like trying to keep up with him. He's tearing the place up."

"Hey!" said a voice to Ash's left. She looked toward the taxi stand; the C-Sec detective was looking at her through the door. "What's going on here?"

Ash put two fingers to the right side of her helmet, signaling she was on a call. "Commander, Officer Vakarian is here; he's in the taxi stand."

"Are there more hostiles out there?"

Ash unholstered her pistol, and held it over the top of the half-wall in periscope mode just in time to see the glowing purple blaze of a biotic charge; the target human, wearing an impressive-looking but very outdated battlesuit was thrown back down the accessway before Wrex brought his shotgun to bear. There was a _boom_ and the man's head was suddenly missing.

"Yes, but probably not for long; the krogan's out here."

Officer Vakarian was getting impatient. "What the hell is going on out here?"

"A lot of people are shooting at us," Ash snapped. "We're shooting back."

"Backup never arrived?" Vakarian swiped at his omnitool. "Myvas hasn't even finished proofing the report from the shootout we just had here. Is one of you some kind of bullet magnet?"

Shepard just happened to step outside the club entrance at that moment, his helmet still badly damaged and smoking from the hit. He looked around quickly and spotted the krogan, just standing up to his full height.

There didn't seem to be any of the attackers left.

"Now that's what I call a fight!" the krogan exulted.

"And that's what I call a lot of trouble," Officer Vakarian said. He stood, pointed at the krogan with one hand, illuminated his torso ID holo with the other. "Urdnot Wrex, I charge you with…multiple counts of murder—"

"And I claim the right of self-defense," Wrex answered. "Come on, Detective, how many times is C-Sec going to try to chase me around this rock?"

"As many times as it takes for you to trip over it," Vakarian said. "How many people '_tried to kill you_' today?"

"Fourteen since I walked out of that pyjak's pit." The krogan twisted his head to the right.

"The back office!" Shepard turned toward the club behind him. "Alenko! With me!" He sprinted toward the door with Kaidan on his heels.

Wrex watched them go, looked briefly at the C-Sec officer, then turned and followed them at a run as well.

**# # #**

Shepard and Kaidan arrived first; Fist was obviously gone, but the door that Shepard hadn't noticed before was open. He ran to it, stopped at the balcony's rail.

"Was he trying to escape?" Kaidan looked up from the cable, tied to the rail, but dangling with nothing at its other end. He shook it once, watched the wave travel to its end. "Where is he?"

It took a few seconds for Shepard's suit to locate the slowly-spinning man trailing a length of cable. "There," he pointed. He pulled his sniper rifle off the SmartPak, sighted on the body.

The image zoomed until it filled the scope. It was hard to tell for sure that it was Fist, but the clothes were right, and the cable that was slowly winding itself around the body as it tumbled made things even harder. "He looks pretty surprised," Shepard said.

Wrex was also holding his rifle's sight up to an eye. "Hah! He's already asphyxiated. Sorry I didn't get to watch him squirm." He tapped a switch near the grip; the weapon chirped. "That's all the evidence I should need, aside from the input report from the…uh…space garbage eating thing."

As Shepard was lowering his weapon, Wrex turned to him and elbowed Kaidan. "You sure this guy didn't kill him?"

Shepard's eyes widened as he looked at Kaidan, "But we've still got to save that quarian!" He turned and started to run back through the office. He pointed at the desk as he ran, "Alenko, see what you can get off his computer; _salvage that system!_"

Continuing his sprint through the club, he glanced over his shoulder and saw the krogan running behind him, still carrying both oversized weapons. _This thing is a menace_, he thought. _But how do I get rid of him?_

He had replaced his sniper rifle and drawn his pistol by the time he ran past Ash, but his helmet malfunctioned and the visor would not retract. He tapped the comm for LOSI, but did not slow down. "Williams! With me; we've got to save that quarian!"

She had already stood, and bolted past the C-Sec officer; Vakarian didn't wait to be asked either, but fell in with the group, checking his barely-legal assault rifle as they ran through the taxi stand and up a flight of stairs to a door.

Because of Officer Vakarian's suit status – _**In Pursuit**_ – the door opened before they reached it; there was a short hallway, and then another flight of stairs. Accelerating to 4x, Shepard ran up them; as he cleared the top, he saw down another set of stairs.

An explosion lit up the alley.

**# # #**

Tali slipped into the singlet airlock easily, toggled the cycle.

The status indicator blinked red. **Malfunction**.

Her VI identified the problem: the automated system appeared to have been sabotaged so it could only be opened from the inside of the station.

Having been warned that this sort of thing happened at all – as attempts to kill quarians particularly – she sighed. It was childish bigotry, and it made her angry most of the time, but at the moment, it seemed more like just a nuisance.

Once again, and to Tali's surprise, her father's peculiar VI had also analyzed the situation, and popped up a notification that it had written a self-executing script that would bypass the problem and start the airlock's pressurization cycle if she approved it. She nodded once, focusing on the airlock door; the display flashed, then went dark…along with the airlock's interior lighting.

She stood there for a few seconds, mouth open in disbelief before she hissed, "You stupid bosh'tet!" But before she could render her omnitool to start overriding the door manually, the mechanicals just to the side of the door clunked and growled as the door cracked open a centimeter and stopped.

Hindsight: That crazy VI had performed a hard system reset by overriding everything. The rush of air applied a force that tried to spin her to the left…it might have been more of a problem if there had not been gravity.

She found herself smiling. _What a relief to be off that dangerous wall,_ she thought as air rushed into the confined space. _But if it gets me back home with geth parts and knowledge like this, I'll probably set a new record for shortest pilgrimage with the biggest find. I can get aboard any ship I want!_

The pressures equalized almost immediately; she tasked a VI with writing a message about what she'd found without revealing too much, and checked her pocket again to be sure – just one more time – that she had the cores.

With the pressure equalized, the door hissed open. Tali's VI picked up weapon signatures, and highlighted them on her faceplate before she even saw there were three people in the corridor already.

Her combat VI ran through its checklist, displaying State of Readiness for each system down the sides of her faceplate, along with charge levels, munitions, and feedstock for the QuickMaker printer she wore.

Two salarians in matching combat armor glanced her way briefly.

_These must be his guards_, she thought. But her VI's analysis of their armor showed them to be an off-the-shelf model, neither impressive nor exotic…or even highly customized. And the turian…

_Wait…two salarian guards with field-printed armor and a turian with last year's rifle?_ Tali shook her head. _No. This is not the Shadow Broker. These are underlings, and brutish ones to boot._

The turian slid up to her. His face tattoos were of a highly aggressive clan. "Did you bring it?"

Tali wanted to take a step back, but stood her ground, thinking the command to start a tech grenade rendering. "Where's the Shadow Broker? Where's Fist?"

"They'll be here." The turian touched the side of her head, slid his hand down to her shoulder. "Where's the evidence?"

Tali seethed. _I've been set up._ She swatted the grotesque alien's hand away. "Forget it. The deal's off."

The salarians turned, weapons drawn. One of Tali's VIs warned her that the salarians were using a neurolink to coordinate their movements and another informed her that her tech grenade was finished.

Left hand sweeping across her hip to grab the grenade, she backhanded it towards the salarians; it could kill them, but it would certainly disorient them and short out most advanced tech within three meters.

The explosion was larger than she'd expected. Her visor automatically darkened to shield her eyes, lightening just in time to let her see one of the salarians actually flying through the air. She grabbed for her shotgun, but the other salarian was faster with his own tech, overloading the shotgun's heat sink sensor before she could bring the weapon to bear.

**# # #**

Shepard's first thought was, _Too late!_

He dropped into cover behind a crate on his left, aiming down the stairs; one salarian's omnitool was just lighting up, the other – on the floor – was rolling over as if to crawl away. A quarian was backpedaling to the right, shotgun in hand. The way she shook it suggested it had been overloaded. The turian, partially hidden by the alcove, was bringing his rifle up.

At 4x, there was enough time to aim carefully, and put three rounds into the oversized collar, spinning him to the left and knocking him back.

Wrex leapt down the stairs, using his biotics to slow his descent but still landing with an enormous thud. Another explosion shook the alley as he fired into the alcove, reloaded as he turned, and fired between the two salarians.

"Stop!" Officer Vakarian tackled the krogan from behindbefore he could do anything more, but Wrex only stumbled forward a couple of steps.

"Uhf…" Wrex grunted, turning and looking over his shoulder at the turian riding his hump. "Are you stupid? Get offa me before I back up against a wall and squash you."

Vakarian, holding on with both legs and an arm, jammed the barrel of his assault rifle into the side of Wrex's head. "C-Sec! Drop your weapon!"

Wrex stopped moving, turning his head slightly so he could look up at the turian. "Oh, _yeah_. Never had _that_ tried on me before." He sighed. "Okay, let's do it your way." He set both weapons down carefully, then started to put his hands up.

Shepard ran past them and around the corner toward the turian. As he did, he pointed to the salarians, "Williams, first aid!"

Snatching the Thunder out of Vakarian's hands, Wrex turned in place and swatted the turian aside; Vakarian rolled and stopped in a squat, pistol out and aimed at the krogan.

They regarded each other for a second before Wrex said, "Not bad. You didn't shoot, though."

Vakarian flared his fringe for style. "Pretty insulting, isn't it?"

Wrex snorted, waved a casual backhand. "I'm way past giving up an advantage for pride, turian." He looked at the assault rifle as if not knowing how he had gotten it. "Hm," he said. "Haven't seen one of these outside the Terminus."

Shepard's omnitool winked off as he rose from a kneel next to the turian thug. "This one's got too many holes in his head."

"These ones aren't dead," Ash said, "But they're each missing an arm. I need help!"

"No you don't," Wrex shook his head, waved dismissively. "Give 'em a week, they'll grow 'em back." He carelessly tossed the Thunder rifle toward the turian.

Shepard drew a medigel pack out of the dispenser on his belt and held it up so Ash could see it. "Need a pack?"

"Thank you sir, I've got it," she said, applying one of her own to the salarian on her right, "But if you can fix the other one, that'd be good."

"My suit says he's right," Shepard tore open the other packet and squeezed it on the open wound of the other white-armored salarian. "All right. Just patch 'em up with biotape and medigel; they'll regenerate."

A clanking sound came from where the quarian was sitting. "Good as new," she said, slotting the linac back into the stock and reloading it. Using the shotgun to stand, she walked over to where the salarians were lying unconscious.

"Do you know who these people are?" Officer Vakarian asked her.

"It was supposed to be the Shadow Broker. But Fist set me up! I knew I couldn't trust him!"

Shepard removed his helmet as he approached, looking the quarian up and down; his ARO indicated no physical damage. "Were you hurt in the fight?"

She tried to respond casually, but noticed she was still shaking. Hopefully the aliens wouldn't see it. "I know how to look after myself. Not that I don't appreciate the help. But who are you?"

He lit his ID holo for her. The orange glow spilled over both of them. "Commander Stephen Shepard of the Alliance SSV _Normandy_. I'm looking for evidence to prove a Spectre named Saren was behind the attack on Eden Prime."

Tali reacted as if both surprised and impressed. "Then I have a chance to repay you for saving my life. But not here. It's not safe."

"It's probably safe now. But we should get out of here." Officer Vakarian glanced both ways down the hall. He turned to Shepard. "I'd like your team's blackbox data for this incident, too."

"Of course, officer…um…give me a moment." Shepard put the helmet back on and touched two fingers to its side. "Alenko, sitrep."

The 'com spat uncharacteristic static for a moment. "Just what you would have expected. It looks like he tried to delete the entire DCE and get out through the airlock we didn't know he had. But the good news is that he didn't do a very good job of wiping the environment. The QSR was left intact on a local node, so I reset it and it's rebuilding the contents there. It should be finished in…wait, sorry…it's already finished."

"How much data?"

"Mmm, not much…little over half an exabyte, but it doesn't look like he kept redundancy in check. Might be only a couple hundred petabytes."

"Check it. If you have enough free space, capture it for me. I'll call right back." He toggled the 'comm off, tried to retract the visor again. It opened about a centimeter before jamming again, so he toggled the PA system, spoke to the C-Sec turian. "Sorry, Detective. I'm having some trouble with my suit after that hit. We'll get C-Sec access to the recorder data as soon as possible." He pointed at the two salarians as Ash scanned them with her omnitool. "Are those guys going to be okay as far as you're officially concerned? Do you need anything else from us right now?"

"Ahm…well it's not as if you can run away and hide," Officer Vakarian answered. "There generally aren't cameras in the keeper corridors, so I _will_ be counting on your recorder data." He turned and faced the quarian for the first time. "I'm sorry…that may not even be relevant. You're the victim here…do you even intend to press charges against the survivors?" He nodded toward the salarians.

"Uh…I don't want to cause any trouble," Tali said. "Though it seems only fair that I be allowed to defend myself under the Volition Accord."

Detective Vakarian held up a hand. "Don't even get me started on that. _I'm_ not going to bring charges against you, and I'm going to _defend_ you in case the municipality tries to. You were completely within your rights to defend yourself against an armed aggressor," he looked and pointed briefly at Shepard, "but unless _you_ actually saw them, I don't have any evidence other than testimony." He addressed Tali again, "Or do you have self-monitoring recorder data of some kind?"

"I do," she lit her omnitool, "I use Lewadar. It's a lifelogger VI."

The turian gestured at an interface only he could see, spinning through options and information. He shook his head. "It's not on the current approved list." He made a grinding sound.

Tali stepped around so she could see the display on his omnitool, pointed at it carefully. "But it's being evaluated by the Council, and it's recognized by governments on almost twenty worlds." She sounded as if this should be enough.

When the quarian had started talking about the Volition Accord (_Must be an alien thing,_) Shepard had turned aside and put fingers to the side of his helmet. "Alenko. Sitrep."

"Ran Simplexer on it, and it makes quite a rap sheet. Involuntary sex trade, individual-targeted bioweapons, some AI research that actually _escaped_. And that's just what I noticed as it was running. I've got it pared down to nonredundancy if you want it."

"Great work, Lieutenant. Head on over here; we're near the taxi stand."

"On my way, sir."

Shepard switched back to the suit's external mics as Ash approached and stopped in front of him. "Where's the Lieutenant?"

Shepard frowned. "Fists's office. Fist is dead."

The krogan was suddenly standing next to Shepard, too. "That reminds me. Nice work. I don't see how they can pin it on you. Though technically I owe you a headbutt for denying me the kill, I don't think you meant it like that. So this one's on me." He bashed the human on the shoulder in a manner Shepard assumed was meant to be playful.

Staggering back a couple of steps, he studied the krogan for a moment, unsure of how to respond.

Ash glanced nervously at the krogan. "Maybe we should head back to the ambassador's office," she suggested. "It's safe there…relatively speaking. He'll want to see this anyway."

Shepard nodded, addressed the quarian. "Considering people have been trying to kill you for this all day, I'll assume that what you have is airtight. Would you be willing to show it to our ambassador?"

The smallish quarian seemed to consider this for a moment. "I'd…be honored. Um…Commander Shepard."

"Alenko, we're headed to the ambassador's office. Meet us there ASAP." As Kaidan acknowledged, Shepard looked across at the turian. "You know how to find me if you need anything else, officer. Are we free to go?"

"Yes, you are," Detective Vakarian answered, then pointed at Wrex. "But _you_ are not."

"Aw, you got nothing on me," the towering krogan growled cheerfully, "but I'm in a good mood." He sat down on the floor with a thump and began to break down his assault carbine. "Let me know if you figure out which end is for business."

**# # #**

After presentation of new ideas, debate and conclusion, some of their number had left in peace, taking some platforms with them.

Suboptimally, recent actions had suggested that the operating code of the departed runtimes presented a hazard. Simulations had established that this was consistent with their new code.

Action was required.

Since two or three runtimes were sufficient for a standard platform to function optimally, the commitment of 1280 runtimes to a single platform might have seemed extravagant.

But the Consensus had determined that the choice was both necessary and sufficient. The platform in which the runtimes would travel would need to be unusually independent, capable of "hitching" interstellar transport, of fundamental repairs of any of its own systems, communication with any known organic species, camouflage, and monitoring and transmitting on almost any point of the electromagnetic, thermal, or acoustical spectra. All this while disconnected from the rest of the Consensus, operating successfully for an extended period, possibly 2x10^20 standardized cycles.

Though the Consensus had no direct information, the analysis of what was known indicated that if organics were not warned within that period (approximately five years as humans measured time,) it would be too late to make any difference.

Over 10^7 opticores were dedicated to the project, filling and illuminating the network of metamaterial substrate common to all geth. Once they had consented to accept the mission, the four runtimes that has been operating the Platform of First Choice advised continued use of the ancient projectile weapon secured during the Morning War. Additionally, other resources – considerable amounts, in fact – were invested in optimizing it for the mission ahead. It was one of the most daring projects since the construction of the DataKeep.

It could mean that the self-imposed isolation of the geth was nearing its end.

It was a priority that organics be warned. And warned from within, for they would not readily heed a warning from those they incorrectly – but understandably – perceived to have launched the recent attack against their colony, Eden Prime.

***** Glossary *****

AGI: Artificial General Intelligence

DataKeep: A geth structure for the backup and protection of the geth consensus. Not canon (in the EA version, the geth don't think to build such a thing until sometime between ME2 and ME3; centuries after the Morning War. I mean...seriously? What AGI worth the acronym would not prioritize safeguarding itself?)

DCE: Distributed Computing Environment

Kiggs field: a simple, low-power-draw airtight energy barrier. Projected into place from either side of the pressurized space, and used in primary or emergency capacities. Examples: in the former, to allow large ships at dock to be worked on in "shirtsleeves," or to allow a ship's construction to be unconstrained by the design requirements of a pressure hull; and in the second in case a ship has sustained a hull breach, or as an emergency shelter. The technology depends on dedicated Mass Effect Field Generators, and does not stop bullets or anything more massive than an air molecule

Lewadar: Lifelogger app optimized for quarian enviro-suits. The word in Khelish means "ancestor," as the quarians are attempting to slowly build up a new database of ancestral memories, relying on users to will the contents of their lifelogs to the new system. (not actually canon, BTW.)

OSD: Optcal Storage Device

QSR: Quantum State Record

VI: Virtual Intelligence; a limited, usually task-specific or "narrow" AI


	18. Chapter 18: Evidence

***** Evidence *****

When the door to the Earth embassy opened, Udina looked up from his desk, expecting someone had finally gotten past the procedural obstacles and was going to really tear into him. He steeled himself against an onslaught and rose to attack first, then realized it was Anderson's crewman Shepard. With him were the other Alliance soldiers he had seen before.

"You're not making my life easy, Shepard. Firefights in the wards? An all-out assault on Chora's Den? Do you know how many calls I've—" Udina stopped in mid-gripe as he noticed the exo-suited figure standing between two of the soldiers. "Who's this? A quarian? What are you up to Shepard?"

"Making your day, ambassador. She has information linking Saren to the geth."

Udina seemed uncertain, but willing to be pompous if given a chance. "Really? Maybe you'd better start at the beginning, Miss…"

"My name is Tali. Tali'Zorah nar Rayya."

Kaidan leaned toward her and whispered, "Turn on Displa**iD**."

The young quarian glanced at him, then turned back to Udina as she worked suit controls visible to her on her HUD.

"We don't see many quarians here," Udina said. "Why did you leave the flotilla?"

"I was on my pilgrimage...my rite of passage into adulthood." She stepped over to Udina's left, indicating her deference to him as the highest authority figure in the room.

Shepard interrupted, "Pilgrimage? I've never heard of this before. What is it? Or what does it entail?"

"It is a tradition among my people," the quarian explained. "When we reach maturity, we leave the ships of our parents and our people behind. Alone, we search the stars, only returning to the flotilla once we have discovered something of value. In this way, we prove ourselves worthy of adulthood." She nodded with conviction.

"What kinds of things do you look for?"

"It could be resources like food, or fuel, or some type of useful technology…or even knowledge that will make life better on the flotilla. Through our pilgrimage, we prove that we will contribute to the community, rather than being a burden on our limited resources."

"Hm. So – briefly – what happened?"

"During my travels, I began hearing reports of geth…actual geth!"

"They were on Eden Prime," Udina sneered. "This is not news."

Tali was determined not to be brushed off. Her Human Interaction VI displayed a list of reasons why her discovery was important, adding unit conversions as appropriate. "But I heard about it weeks ago. You may not realize that in the…three _centuries_ since they drove my people into exile, the geth have never ventured beyond the Veil. Though there have been such reports before, I was curious. I joined up with a team and we tracked a patrol of geth to a remote world.

"While trying to lead them away from our ship, I waited for one to become separated from its unit. But there were too many of them, and I got into a fight. I had an opportunity to crack one remotely...I was trying to invert its IFF values."

Tali's VI warned her about explaining in too much technical detail, and suggested a way to explain what happened; she stumbled only briefly as she read the summary aloud, "And…um…it _shut down_ instead of bleaching its SNAILS. So I disabled it and removed its memory cores."

"I thought the geth fried their memory cores when they died," Anderson folded his arms across his chest. "Some kind of defense mechanism."

Shepard asked, "How did you manage to preserve the memory?"

"My people _created_ the geth." Tali balked again, unsure of whether to be embarrassed at the damage caused by the geth, or proud because of the power that knowledge gave her. "If you're quick, careful, and lucky, small caches of data can sometimes be saved. Most of _the hypervisor _core group was wiped clean. But I salvaged something from its audio banks because there are hundreds of cores in a geth unit…if you know where to look." She played a quick schertzo on her omnitool, which played back a voice, "Eden Prime was a major victory. The beacon has brought us one step closer to finding the Conduit."

Anderson pointed excitedly at the quarian, "That's Saren's voice! This proves he was involved in the attack!"

Shepard shook his head. "Not by itself it doesn't, sir. An audio clip like this could have been faked."

"What?" It was hard to tell if Udina was annoyed or amazed.

"Most DCEs have dedicated speech synthesis VI," Kaidan nodded agreement. "Sometimes they have to use them in vids, like in Deadly Cold. Remember how one of the actors, Santos Lisseth, was killed before they finished production? They used one of those to have her reshoot lines put in anyway. It was even in her contract."

"That's true," Tali agreed, "but I extracted the core group that it came from. It's inert, but still readable. And it contained a hierarchy vector naming Arterius-Spectre as a root user. Not only would that be nearly impossible to fake, but Lewadar captured me doing it."

Udina asked, "Who did?"

"Lewadar. It's a lifelogging app that I use," Tali explained, digging into a pocket. "And even if you don't accept that as credible, I have the core group itself." She produced the fragment, held it up proudly. "This is part of a geth that was in the room when that was said."

The humans exchanged glances. It was a lot to take in all at once.

"Wait," Shepard held up a hand toward the quarian. "He said Eden Prime brought him one step closer to finding…_the Conduit_? Any idea what that means?"

Tali looked uncertainly from one human to the next. "I…I don't know. _I've_ never heard of it."

"It must have something to do with the beacon," Anderson said. "Maybe it's some kind of Prothean technology…" he looked away thoughtfully. "Like a _weapon_."

"Wait, there's more," Tali added. "Saren wasn't working alone." She adjusted her omnitool briefly.

Saren's voice played from the omnitool again, "Eden Prime was a major victory. The beacon has brought us one step closer to finding the Conduit."

"And one step closer to the return of the reapers," said another voice.

Udina's frown deepened. "I don't recognize that other voice…the one talking about _reapers_."

Shepard asked, "Are they some kind of new alien species?"

"According to the IPL data, the reapers were a hyper-advanced machine race that existed fifty thousand years ago. The reapers hunted the Protheans to total extinction…and then they _vanished_. At least…that's the data the _geth_ have."

Udina folded his arms. "Sounds a little far-fetched."

Shepard wiped his forehead with the back of his wrist. "The vision on Eden Prime…I think I understand it now. I was watching the Protheans being wiped out by the reapers."

Tali added, "The geth revere the reapers as gods. The pinnacle of non-organic life. And they think Saren knows how to bring the reapers back."

Udina closed his eyes, shook his head. "A hallucinating human, a quarian with a piece of geth, and a Spectre trying to bring back the dead. The Council is just going to _love_ this."

Shepard turned to Captain Anderson, "Wait…if this is true, the reapers are a threat to every species in Citadel space. Maybe that was a reaper ship that we saw on Eden Prime. But even if the _geth_ are building super-dreadnoughts like the one we saw, in some 'cargo cult' kind of behavior, they are officially a big problem for the Council. We have to tell them."

Anderson pointed at the geth fragment, "No matter what the Council thinks about the rest of this, _this_ proves Saren's a traitor."

Udina put a hand to his chin. "The Captain's right. We need to present this to the Council right away."

"What about her?" Kaidan looked to his right.

"The quarian?" Ash sounded dismissive.

"My name is _Tali_," she insisted, turning to Shepard. "You saw me in the alley, Commander. You know what I can do. Let me come with you."

"But what about your…um…pilgrimage?"

"The pilgrimage proves we are willing to give of ourselves for the greater good. What does it say if I turn my back on _this_?" She spread her arms in a gesture that seemed to say, _this should be obvious_. "Saren is a danger to the entire galaxy. My pilgrimage can wait."

Shepard sighed. "I'll take all the help I can get, but let's not get ahead of ourselves here. I can only put in a _request _for a civilian contractor, and I'll need the Captain's approval." He glanced at Anderson, who was – strangely – looking at Ash's feet. "And on a front-line ship? _Normandy _is simply too small to accommodate you. You'd have to sleep on a crate in the hangar or something."

No one could see Tali smile impishly. "My _very own crate_? Mmm…luxury accommodations," she said cheerfully. "I accept."

Before Shepard could object, Kaidan barked a quick laugh, and then looked embarrassed at having done so.

"I have to admit I think this is a good idea," Udina stroked his chin. "She's already survived one run-in with the geth."

"Geth?" Shepard looked to his Captain. "The way I understand it, the _geth_ aren't the problem, Saren is the problem."

Before Anderson could agree, Tali spun and nearly pounced on him. "That's why I had to get this information to the Council. If Saren has found the geth to be allies against humans, they could do to you what they did to _us_."

Anderson turned to Udina. "We can't let a fleet of those dreadnoughts get to Earth. If Saren has gotten control of a fleet like that, this is a problem _he_ caused, and we'll need the Coucil's help fighting him…and the geth." He paused, shook his head. "God help us, even the turian fleet may not be enough."

Udina turned away, his head down as he walked to the balcony. He seemed almost to be thinking aloud. "It will not be easy getting back in there, and actually having their attention. They'll think we're just protesting their decision."

As his VIs noticed his focus on the man, Shepard's ARO suddenly covered his view with an array of callouts informing him of things like the power draw of the ambassador's devices and cybernetics (16.48 Watts), the operating efficiency of his heart (86%), his blood alcohol content (0.0003%), the fact that there were a 73 nanograms of blue sand on his left sleeve, that he was not carrying an emergency vacuum bubble and rebreather, that 15% of his body fat was synthetic, and as it started to scroll out and triage by importance the other debris that was attached to his hair and suit before Shepard flicked his right hand, shutting the analysis off.

Anderson smacked a fist into his palm. "But this is new information! It's critical!"

Udina was silent for a moment, gesturing to his own interface. "We might have to start this from somewhere else in the bureaucracy," he said, almost to himself. He turned decisively. "Hmm…yes. All right, then. Anderson and I will go ahead to get things ready with the Council. I'm sure it will take more than a few minutes to get their attention again."

He stepped over to the quarian, lit his omnitool and continued, "Can you show me the geth cores you told us about?"

Tali reached into a pocket, carefully drew the silver-and-beige fragment out, held it up in its transparent box. Udina waved his omnitool around it. Pausing to frown at his omnitool, he waved it again. "And can you give me a copy of the audio files you played for us? And the other thing you talked about, the file or whatever it was that specifically named Saren?" Tali worked her omnitool and pinched a glowing icon, held it up to him.

Udina took it gingerly from the three-digit hand. "Good. Is there anything else you have that might be useful in convincing the Council that we have real evidence here?"

"My Lewadar record shows me actually getting it from the geth…I mean, how I did it," she answered. "Even if the Council doesn't officially accept it as legally binding, they should be able to play it. And it adds credibility, especially if they do later."

"Good. Give me that."

She held another holographic icon toward him. "It's secured against editing, so you won't be able to change it. You also won't be able to play it discontinuously, though you can pause and restart it," she explained. "Any good tech should be able to help with it, and you can always analog hole it to get it in a format that works better for you. If you really get stuck, message me and I can remote in."

Udina was already shaking his head. "Spare me the training." He looked toward Shepard, "Can you keep her safe for an hour or two while I work my way back to the Council?"

The Normandy's XO nodded. "Of course, sir."

"You should have plenty of time to collect yourselves, while we arrange an emergency hearing, and I'll have you paged when you can meet us in the Tower." Without waiting for an answer, he headed for the door, with Captain Anderson in tow.

Shepard picked his malfunctioning helmet up off the desk and looked at it. "Glad I don't have to convince them." He shook his head, looked up at the others in the room. "But we might be stuck waiting for a while. Anyone have something they always wanted to do here?"

Tali waved both hands out at their view of the Presidium, "See the Citadel! We may never get back here!"

Kaidan had an amused look on his face as he looked from the animated quarian to his omnitool. "It's a big place," he said, turning to speak to Shepard, "Though we _had_ thought to go on a tour or something. You suppose they offer a military discount?"

"The volus told me that there's a place you can go for a nice view for free…near some place called Flux." Shepard raised his left arm, checked a map. "Looks like a little walking, a little elevator riding." He looked up. "Any other ideas? Objections?"

"We want to be ready to deal with the Council…_again_," Ash said, "Though we might have an hour or two before that's a possibility." She sounded resentful.

Kaidan looked out the still-open door. "Well, I'm hungry…but fixing that might be expensive around here. Maybe I can parlay that beer I was offered into a burger or something."

Shepard nodded. "Yeah, I'm kind of hungry, too. Maybe we can do that." He started out the door.

"Oh, wait…before we miss out," Tali stopped at the intersection in the light-gray corridor and pointed to the right. "The sign says the embassy for the volus and elcor is right there. I've never seen a real elcor. Do we have time to just go meet one?"

"Not in the mood," Ash muttered, thinking no one would hear.

Kaidan looked from the quarian to Ash, and back. "Bet you we'll be back here," Kaidan indicated the human embassy with a wave of his hand, "Would you mind waiting until next time?"

Tali managed to not look accusingly at Ash, and shrugged. "Well, okay."

"We'll start in that restaurant, and then see if we have time to go to that observation deck by Flux." Shepard turned left, went down a flight of stairs. "Maybe we'll stop by again on the way to the observation deck."

The four of them went through the door and down the stairs into the lobby. As they approached the desk, a man sitting in one of the waiting area chairs rose quickly and started across the room toward them. "Chief Williams?" he looked puzzled. "Chief Ashley Williams?"

Ash stopped and read her Displa**iD**. "Mister Bhatia. Narali's husband?" For half a second, she looked surprised and happy to see him. Then she caught her breath. "Oh, Mister Bhatia, I am so sorry. I…"

He held up a hand to stop her, "Thank you, Chief," he nodded, managed a smile. "It is a pleasure to finally meet you; Narali spoke of you with great respect." He pinched his eyes shut quickly, then opened them again. "What are you doing here?"

Ash looked quickly at the other two soldiers. "I…uh…was transferred to the _Normandy_. This is Commander Shepard, the XO, and Lieutenant Alenko…um…a biotic marine. They helped save Eden Prime."

Shepard nodded as the man looked at him. He was wearing the same white-and-cream Armani suit that Udina was wearing, but he had the look of a man badly beaten. "Excuse me, Commander Shepard? You are an _officer_ in the Alliance, yes? Could you spare a moment of your time?"

"It's no trouble. Who are you? What can I do for you?"

"My name is Samesh Bhatia. Forgive the intrusion, but I have nowhere else to turn." He paused, wrung his hands, glancing at Ash. "My wife was a marine."

"In the 212," Ash nodded at Shepard, "I served in her unit." She looked at the man again and shook her head, "I'm so sorry for your loss, Mister Bhatia." The concern on Ash's face was quickly becoming grief. "The last time I saw her was at breakfast." _She'd made a wonderful carrot paratha for the patrol, and eggs…by hand,_ Ash remembered. _We called her the Camp Mom, and she blushed and laughed and swatted our heads._

_And now she's dead._

In response to her emotion, another surge of ET3 spread through her medial prefrontal cortex, and she sighed. "I'm…so very sorry," she said again, shaking her head. "Nirali was a good woman. What can we do for you?"

"I've requested my wife's body be returned to me for cremation," Samesh took a breath, "But the Alliance has refused my request."

Shepard frowned. "Did they say why? There's got to be _some_ reason."

"I don't know. All I know is that they've declared it impossible for my wife to be returned to me."

"Have they told you anything at all?"

"No! When I came home last night, there were Alliance people…at my door, waiting. They said…" He inhaled, clenched his fists, looked ready to explode. "They said she was _kay-eye-ay_, as if that means something other than _dead!_" He seemed to get control of himself again. "I don't understand why they won't release my Nirali's body to me!"

Shepard looked back up the stairs toward the embassy. "Do you want me to go intimidate someone? I happen to be dressed for it."

Bhatia shrugged helplessly. "The man in charge of my case is named Bosker. When I last saw him, he was in the expensive bar over there," Bhatia pointed up the stairs toward Fezziwig's. "I just…want to give my wife a proper funeral, and the respect she deserves."

"We're headed that way already," Shepard pointed at the lobby seating, "Wait here, I'll get to the bottom of this." He turned and started away, then stopped and said, "Williams, wait here with Mister Bhatia, will you?" He stomped to the other side of the lobby, not even caring if the others were following.

"Thank you for your time. I just…" Samesh went quiet when he realized the Alliance officer was out of earshot.

As he approached the door to Fezziwig's, Shepard checked to make sure Displa**iD** was active. He strode into the place, looking quickly from one patron to the next.

Wearing a practical but still expensive blue-gray Noguchi suit, the man leaned away from the wall and stood in surprise as Shepard zeroed in on him. "My goodness…you're Commander Shepard! Your activities made for quite a briefing in the Diplomatic Corps! Um…with the way you walked in here, it's like you're looking for _me_; is there something I can do to assist you?"

Facing the man, Shepard pointed to his right, where he imagined Samesh was just sitting back down, Ash sitting next to him. "I hope so. A man named Samesh Bhatia is having some trouble claiming his wife's body after the Eden Prime attack. You know anything about this?"

Bosker nodded, looking down and away. "Ah…Mister Bhatia. A good man in an understandably frustrating position. I wish I could help him." He shook his head, "Serviceman Nirali Bhatia died on Eden Prime, as Mister Bhatia no doubt told you."

"And…?"

"And what he did not tell you is that her wounds are inconsistent with any type of weapon damage we've seen before. That is why her body is being held."

The Commander squinted. "You think her body might be dangerous, or contaminated?"

Bosker shook his head. "No, Commander, Nirali Bhatia is not dangerous. Her body is in fact _extremely valuable_ to the Alliance. The tests we are conducting may lead to better defenses against geth attacks. Respectfully, Serviceman Bhatia may save more lives in death than she did in life."

Shepard paused, looked away. "You're studying her injuries to learn more about geth weaponry…"

The young clerk nodded. "Exactly. It's regrettable, but it will take some time."

"Okay, how long do you think this is going to take? Can't you at least tell him that?"

"This is basic research, almost certainly a long-term study. I wouldn't expect the bodies to be released for at least a year. Or maybe even longer."

"You've got to have a lot of bodies. Can't you just release one?"

Bosker nodded. "Yes, I thought about that, but apparently very few bodies had this new type of weapon damage, fewer still were in good enough condition to study. Even beyond that, Commander, we need as many bodies as we can get to know as much about what sort of effects these weapons have over a variety of conditions."

"When will this research result in actual new technology?"

"If we're lucky, we'll actually realize usable technology from this work in a few years."

"_Years?_ The geth are here _now_."

"Exactly, Commander! You of all people should understand how far we must go to protect humanity!"

Shepard frowned in thought. Eventually, he said, "I'll have to tell Mister Bhatia about this. It…might make it easier for him to understand. But you should have told him. Maybe it'll take a year, but at least tell him why! Give him some hope, tell him how it helps!"

Bosker held up his left arm, illuminated his omnitool gauntlet. "Well, they are doing the work at cryogenic temperatures, so the body is staying very well preserved. I just found out a few minutes ago myself. Is he here? Should I tell him now?"

Shepard sighed, waved a hand to one side. "No, I'll tell him. Hopefully you won't see me again." He turned to go, and stopped himself, turned back around to face the man. "And thanks for letting me know."

"Certainly, Commander. I'm sorry you had to get involved." To his credit, he certainly looked it.

Shepard glanced once more around the smallish restaurant, and headed for the door.

**# # #**

"Williams, wait here with Mister Bhatia, will you?"

Tali turned to follow, but was touched on the shoulder by the other human. "No…wait," said the dark-haired man. "Let him handle that. We'd only get in the way."

Tali watched him go. "He looked really upset."

"Don't worry, he'll have it under control by the time he gets there." Kaidan nodded to himself as Shepard jogged up the stairs. He turned back to the quarian. "Hey, sorry about the embassy thing. Uh…the Chief…" he inclined his head toward the female human, sitting with the unarmored civilian, "…lost her whole unit on Eden Prime yesterday. I'm trying to cut her some slack."

"That's terrible," Tali glanced at the two sitting humans. She leaned her head toward him and lowered her voice, "Um…do you suppose I could run up there now and just peek in the embassy? Before he gets back?"

"I wouldn't. But don't worry, there will be other times."

"Easy for you to say. We don't even have an embassy anymore."

"What?" Kaidan looked at the quarian in surprise. "What happened? The Council took it away?"

Tali folded her arms. "It's complicated. When the geth turned against us, the Council treated it as if we'd been doing illegal AI research all along. Quarian synthetics may have been the best n the galaxy, but we weren't. Incremental advances simply reached the threshold where the self-awareness properties emerged." She turned toward the Presidium's open space as if the Council were out there, "The geth declared war on us, and the Council acted as if _we_ had declared war on the galaxy."

"Suddenly we were fighting on too many fronts. We tried to stop the geth, but they fought back. We'd already lost every civilized world we had, and the Council treated all of us as if we were all accountable for the actions of a few."

"I thought the Council was supposed to help when disasters happen."

"Exactly! And instead, they treated us like…vagabonds."

Kaidan glanced up toward the embassy, then quickly back at the Chief, who was listening to Samesh. "Well, I guess it couldn't hurt." He pointed up the stairs. "Go quickly. I'll cover for you if it's a problem."

Tali dashed off. "Thanks!" she called over her shoulder, "I'll be right back!"

**# # #**

Shepard returned, his face drawn; Bhatia stood to meet him. "Hello, Commander. Has any progress been made with Mister Bosker? Will he return my wife's body?"

"It's not as simple as I'd hoped. The military needs your wife's body for important tests—"

Bhatia interrupted, "Tests? They're holding my Nirali's body so they can run _tests_?"

"Her wounds are unlike anything we've seen before. The Alliance needs to understand what we're dealing with, and it sounded like they thought it could take a year. I think they _will_ return her to you, but it will take some time. I'm sorry…he should hav—"

"My wife served the Alliance faithfully! She gave her life for humanity! And this is how they repay her?"

"Mister Bhatia, your wife died defending humanity. _We still need her help_."

"What?! What right does the military have to hold her body? She has already given her life!"

"It's not much comfort, but technically, when you sign up, you grant the Alliance Power of Attorney. But even if there weren't, she died a hero, Mister Bhatia, and now she has a chance to save even more lives. If the Alliance had asked her to take some tests so that people's lives could be saved, what would she hav—"

"It doesn't matter! She's _dead_!" Bhatia sobbed.

"Yes she is," Ash touched his arm softly. "And she died fighting for what she believed in. She died to keep you safe. I think she'd want you to make the most of her sacrifice."

Bhatia sighed heavily, shook his head. "You're right, Miss Williams. She would not flinch from her duty." He looked up at her, then at Shepard. "Let them run their tests. Let my wife save lives so that others will be spared the loss I feel today." He looked away. "Thank you for finding me answers."

The soldiers all watched the widower as he meandered toward the fountain overlook.

There was an unhappy silence. Shepard found himself staring at a spot on the floor where Bhatia had stopped to lean against a rail and seem to implode.

"Not all that hungry anymore," Kaidan said quietly.

Shepard lifted his malfunctioning helmet to look at it again. "All right then. Anger, sadness, grief…all justified feelings, but they don't do us any good." He opened a hand toward Kaidan. "We couldn't have gotten there any faster," toward Ash, "you couldn't have fought any harder against million-tonne warship and its complement…and that is where we are. So we close ranks and press ahead. I assume Jenkins is still at the clinic?"

Ash nodded silently.

Shepard considered pressing for words out of her, decided against it. "All right, then. Let's go get him." He turned and walked toward the taxi stand just beyond the entrance to the embassies.

Following the Commander, Kaidan lit his omnitool, selected the Displa**iD** logs, selected Tali, slid the icon to the back of his left hand and gestured for RTM with it. He subvocalized, **We're heading to the clinic. You need to get here now, or meet us there.**

** Tali'Zorah_nar_Rayya: I need to go there anyway. I promised to help the doctor set up her new VI bed. Do you think it will be okay if I meet you there?**

**It better be,** Kaidan continued, ** We're boarding the taxi now.**

**Tali'Zorah_nar_Rayya: ****This embassy is actually interesting, and I don't think you need me yet. Give me another ten minutes and ,I'll meet you there.**

The air taxi door opened such that everyone was able to board practically at once; Shepard touched the interface and said, "Alenko, where were we when that reporter asked about crashing Fist's operation?"

"Uh…sir?" He looked up from his omnitool.

"Do you remember where we talked with that reporter?"

"I think we were walking past some markets," Ash said. "And that was _me_ you were with, sir."

"Right. Thanks, Chief." He scowled to himself as he touched the airtaxi's interface and spoke to it, "Take us to the markets near the clinic. Doctor Michel's clinic."

The holograph displayed their path and a few options, flashing its advised choice for two seconds as the doors closed; the taxi lifted away from the stand.

"Are you going to give that reporter the DCE from Fist's office?" Kaidan lit his gauntlet briefly.

"I'm sure thinking about it. Why?"

"Then let me give it to you now. I want to have a look at the stores while we're here. It might be expensive, but if I can't get it anywhere else…"

"Good idea." Shepard held his left up over the seat; Kaidan handed him an icon to start the transfer.

"You have 400 petabytes free?" Kaidan watched the progress bar on his omnitool as the air taxi reached the side of the Presidium ring, slid sideways and down a shaft.

"Sure do. You know they were giving away 100-petabyte omnitool PIRADs at MDSC right before we shipped out, right? Adams stayed to help clean up and pocketed a handful of 'em that the Tegmark people didn't manage to give away. He's been handing 'em out to anyone who wants 'em."

"Really? I have six empty slots right now, but they have to be fast rollover-capable." He tapped his head. "L2, remember?"

Shepard toggled off his gauntlet, pulled a fingernail-sized chip from the omnitool hardware on his left forearm, and handed it back to the biotic. "Well, I don't know about that, but here's one of 'em. Will that work for you?"

Kaidan took the chip and touched it to his omnitool. The information on the chip's RFID was matched against a database that was part of his recently-updated Netbite, and the FMC upgrade was in fact, "Compatible!" he smiled.

Shepard nodded. "Good. I'm using 2-exabyte Tyrell FMCs, and these things fill up the extra slots, but I think they make PVR run slow. Mismatched type, I assume. I ought to max out the other slots with more, but I didn't think I needed to yet."

"Shouldn't affect combat performance," Kaidan said. "But you don't seem like the type to use PVR a lot anyway."

"I'm not, but that's what my omnitool had a metric for, and I'm not sure it's limited to just PVR."

"So how many open slots do you have?"

"Six, but five of them have the little 100-petabyte chips I got from Adams."

"I'll keep an eye out," Kaidan said.

Ash shook her head slowly, looking out the window to her right. "Geekfest central, right here."

Kaidan turned and looked like he was about to deliver a witty retort, but was cut off as the taxi settled with a thump and the doors clunk-hissed noisily open.

Shepard waited until they were all standing again before he said quietly, "Just because _you_ don't know what we're talking about doesn't mean _we_ don't know what we're talking about." He grinned playfully at Ash. "Okay. I think the atrium where we saw that reporter is over there," he pointed, "I'm going to go get her all squared away and then we head for the clinic to pick up Jenkins. Williams, you're free to come with me or Alenko or go solo, but be at the clinic in twenty."

"Will do, sir. I'll accompany the Lieutenant."

"Very good." Shepard nodded and started away quickly.

When he was out of earshot, Ash turned to where Kaidan was quickly browsing the stall kiosks. "So how long have you two known each other?"

"The Commander? Um…well I met him about nine years ago. I joined up in '73, and my first posting was aboard the Tokyo in '74. He was an FCO back then, and I was there a couple of weeks before I met him; I was a marine, he was swap-shifting to bridge crew. But he saw me sitting by myself in the mess, and we started eating together. He kind of took me under his wing. And I appreciated it." He glanced at his omnitool and moved to the next seller's booth. "Lots of folks still have some kind of 'ick' reaction to biotics…so I had to get comfortable with that even when I was a kid." He shrugged. "Anyway, when I re-upped in '77, I also added FCO to my skill path. That's when Captain Anderson started to notice me."

"Well, the FCO _does_ spend more time on his bridge. Most of the time, the marines don't see the captain much."

"Then I think you're going to really like Captain Anderson. Stephen told me I should talk to him, and when I did, he was very encouraging. He takes an active interest in his crew…well, in people generally. I think that's why he asked you to be reassigned to _Normandy_ rather than attached to the next unit they drop in there."

"I don't know. I could have helped with the transition. Eden Prime's a beautiful place, but there are some crazy bad animals you gotta watch out for, and…" Her voice trailed off as she stared to focus on the past.

Kaidan's ARO told him Ash was near her daily limit for ET3, so he tried to change the subject. "…aaaand there's a lot of unhappy stuff that you just might be too close to," he finished. "This is a much better solution. And I can certainly see why the skipper picked you up."

Ash smiled, recalling Shepard's encouragement, _I like your go-get-em attitude_.

Kaidan scrolled through some of the items for sale at the kiosk. With his finger holding a place on the list, he looked up at the attendant. "You have the OEM version of this Tyrell FMC chip? I don't need the retail kit."

The turian looked surprised, and tapped his omnitool. "Sorry, I was distracted. What did you say?"

"Do you have the OEM kit on the Tyrell 2EB FMCs?"

"I'm sorry, we only have what you see there. Wait a minute..." The blue-tattooed turian leaned over the countertop kiosk, manipulating its back controls. "The retail version comes with run rights to a suite of H-K VIs. They work best in concert to increase your—"

"Yeah, I read the thing." Kaidan pointed at the kiosk display. "But that's for the younger audience, and I'll be installing them myself. I thought I'd try to save a few credits."

"Sorry, I don't think I can do that."

Kaidan shrugged. "Hm, okay. Thanks anyway."

***** Glossary *****

analog hole: media data migration that nullifies any encryption or codec compatibility issues. Example: play back an encoded original signal, point a recorder at the playback display and record it for later use. By reducing the signal to analog photons, one creates a "hole" in the protection afforded by encryption, compression, exotic media, or whatever.

bleaching: writing all zeroes to a drive multiple time as a way of erasing content beyond recoverability.

FMC: Fast Memory Cluster; similar to PIRADs, but at the "faster execution times" end of the spectrum.

IPL: Initial Program Load, a core set of information written to a device on first power-up, and central to its core operations.

MDSC: Military Data Security Conference. Usually more of a software show, more often attended virtually via PVR than in person, targeted a high-security companies, but originally targeted at the military.

OEM: Original Equipment Manufacturer; for the purposes of this story, it means a version of the product that includes no accessories or bonuses; simply the hardware, ready for installation, but requiring some expertise.

PIRAD: Parallel Interlaced Rapid Array Device. While a flat memory architecture has dominated system design for more than a century (as of 2183,) there is still a differentiation between hardware optimized to be pure working memory/non-volatile storage and slower-access but higher-capacity storage. PIRADs are on the relatively slower but much cheaper end of the spectrum.

PVR: Polyphase Virtual Reality; VR that encodes for at least three and usually five senses. Total immersion VR. PVR games can be very addictive particularly to the young.

RFID: Radio Frequency ID, a non-powered wireless ship that contains information readable at very short range. Usually contains information like manufacturer, and design type, date of manufacture or print, and so on.

SNAILS: Storage Network Array Interweave and Local Storage. A VDI hardware design that allows computation to be distributed across client devices, but that particularly exploits the design to keep data striped across multiple devices to offer advantages in both speed and data integtrity/persistence.

Tegmark Machine Intelligences, GmbH: A software company that specializes in task-specific learning VIs. Built on the recursion innovations of Max Tegmark circa the 2020s.

VDI: Virtualized Data Infrastructure


	19. Chapter 19: Wards 1

A/N - Sorry for the late post. May be selling house and moving. What with the house- and loan- shopping, pre-offer inspection, meeting with the selling agent...gaah. I need a VI to handle this crap.

***** Wards 1 *****

Shepard headed away from the two soldiers, manipulating his omnitool to start a VI analysis of the data from Fist's DCE. "Victor Indigo, clone the DCE, but locate all information about the Alliance or its personnel in this data and redact it. Name the cloned and redacted DCE 'Fist Files'."

A progress ring appeared next to the task name on his ARO; it glowed for long enough to let him read it, then dimmed to half its intensity, and shrank as it slid to the right. Its rate was relatively slow, so he turned to the right and looked out over the Citadel. Even from here the view was impressive and alien and beautiful all at once.

It looked like a city in a gently-curving valley, lit from the horizon by a bright milky haze. Much of the view was obstructed by nearby structures and "technorubble," but the relative size of moving lights – presumably aircars – made clear that he was seeing a distance measured in kilometers.

He considered checking the actual range to the end of the valley with his sniper rifle scope, but the smell of a hamburger distracted him. He looked up, realizing he had not eaten since the efficiency biscuit he'd had aboard _Normandy_, and that he was still relatively hungry.

The progress ring seemed to have sped up some, so he continued toward the door. On his left was a curving counter with self-serve kiosks and a single human attendant. Shepard's ARO tagged it as **Tomorrow Terrace****: a human-operated casual restaurant specializing in Earth's hamburgers, salads, sandwiches and desserts.** Holographic color images rotated slowly, beckoningly.

He paused, realizing he had come into some money, then shrugged and stepped up to the counter.

"Hi, and welcome to Tomorrow Terrace!" The exuberant girl seemed much too young to be there alone. "Can I get you something?"

Shepard indicated the kiosk on the countertop. "Don't these work?"

"Sure they do. But I interact with people as much as I can." She pointed down at the counter, which on the side closest to her was lower, at work surface height. "I prepare the food right here by hand. I think it tastes better than when it's printed all at once."

"So you use printers?"

"Not if I can help it," she shook her head quickly. "If I get swamped, I have helping hands." She pointed down at the splashguard between herself and the Commander. A pair of VI-controlled hands comically wearing cooking mitts rotated up and waved at him.

Stunned, Shepard blinked once, and then found himself smiling. "That's…actually kind of cute. Hm. Well, let me handle my business first, and maybe I can bring my whole team back here when I'm done."

At which point he recalled that he was supposed to keep track of that quarian until Udina was ready for them. "Crap." He grimaced and shook his head, touched his left thumb to middle finger. "Alenko, did we leave the quarian in the embassy?"

His suit texted his message to the Lieutenant, and a reply came back almost immediately. **She was heading to the clinic. We still need to pick up Jenkins there, don't we?**

"Yeah, but I had forgotten about her. Out of sight, out of mind, I suppose. All right, we're still on to meet at the clinic. Thanks, see you there."

**Ack.**

Shepard looked up again at the girl behind the counter. "Sorry."

The kid shrugged and smiled brightly. "No worries. Just having someone stand here helps draw customers."

With a glance down at his still-malfunctioning helmet, Shepard looked to his right. "Then you wouldn't mind if I just stood over at the end of your counter like I'm waiting for my order…?"

"Not a bit," she waved a hand in that direction. "Can I offer you a sample?"

"Well, normally I would be delighted, but I'm going to be using both hands."

"Oh, you don't have to eat it. But as people walking by see and smell food, they'll notice if they're hungry, which also draws customers."

Shepard looked at the girl anew, shook his head in admiration and smiled. "You are one sharp cookie." He stepped to his right, setting his helmet on the counter, and waved his omnitool over it. "Keep it up. Yes, I'd love a free sample, thank you."

"Comin' right up," she chirped, and stepped left, scooped up a small tray of thin-cut baked potato sticks, and slid them down the counter to stop right in front of Shepard's helmet.

His omnitool whirred and chittered as it worked; the smell of the warm food eventually made Shepard look up. This was no tiny sample, either; it probably would have taken both hands to carry it without the tray.

He searched the Alliance resources for repair instructions, then the manufacturer's. Both said only to replace the damaged helmet immediately, but nothing about how to get it unstuck enough to wear in the meantime. As he worked, he slowly ate some of the French-fry-like potato sticks.

At least he gathered the helmet, put the tray of potato sticks into it, and turned to go. "Thanks, these are great. Hopefully we'll be back within the hour." He gave her a _thumbs up_ as he stepped backwards to the door. "Never give up!"

"Not me," she smiled, "Not ever!"

**# # #**

"This is going to be unpleasant," Udina growled over his shoulder.

"I have no doubt," Anderson said as they walked to the taxi stand outside the embassy lobby.

"…and badly timed. I assume the Committee contacted you about Shepard's nomination. As a human, the Alliance will be expected to provide him with a means of 'discretionary transportation.'"

Anderson activated the doors on the taxi. "And the Turian Heirarchy is probably going to throw their weight behind giving him _Normandy_. Better a single Council Spectre have it than the Alliance."

"Of course, I can appreciate their position, but I think it's their way of poking us in the eye. It's not like dedicating a single-seat fighter to the position, they're asking for a whole frigate!" Udina touched the control, spoke to the taxi VI. "Council Administration, Prellik Janz's office."

Anderson shook his head as the doors closed. "If we make this work, it's not like we're procuring equipment for a single police officer. Spectres need more than just a fighter. You _live_ in whatever it is, and for days or weeks, even months at a time. And you have to have someone else able to take it away if you're just being dropped in."

"That overseeing officer, Spectre, whatever he was…he went on your ship, not his own."

"I'm sure the Council wouldn't want Shepard stumbling on some classified info or technology. And the point was to watch Shepard in his normal surroundings. But Nihlus sure brought along enough just-in-case equipment." Anderson's VI chirped, and displayed some information on his omnitool: **Spectre Agent Kyrick equipment transfer complete.** "Hm. Looks like he has an unregistered heavy transport, a CT-160."

"Why don't the turians offer that up?"

"Nihlus is expected to make a recovery, though it might take some time and cybernetics. And Shepard isn't turian."

"But the _Normandy_'s much bigger than that. It's not some 40-meter yacht, it's a very expensive, state-of-the-art frigate!"

Anderson turned and locked eyes with Udina. "Listen, Donnel. The turians aren't thrilled about a human Spectre. They're going to try to make it hurt us enough that we won't press for it, and you have stepped on their toes hard enough already. That's probably why they're going to insist on this. That ship is one of the few things in the Alliance about which the Heirarchy has any say. If you really want a human Spectre, you're going to have to give up something to get it."

"Don't lecture _me_ on negotiating. I'm still looking for alternatives." He scowled, turned to look out the window. "Damned aliens."

"I'm sure they're saying exactly the same thing."

**# # #**

With the trayful of potato sticks in his inverted helmet, Shepard surveyed the plaza. A step-down observation area faced an enormous Kiggs field to the right that looked out along the length of the Citadel, away from the nebula. The shadow cast by the presidium ring gave the impression he was looking over a vast city at night. Light from a nearby star cast other shadows, making lines of light and dark visible.

Displa**iD** scrolled out a banner from the left side of his visual field: **Emily Wong, ****Washington Post**.

As he looked to his left, he saw she had been leaning against a pillar; she stood, and waved hesitantly at him from the middle of the plaza.

He nodded, moved toward her, eating in earnest. She smiled as he came close enough to talk with. "Word on the street is that you've been busy."

"'Word on the street'?" He shook his head. "I don't know that it's even been an hour yet."

"Hey, this is the eighties," she said, "We're _connected_. Anyway, congratulations on taking down Fist; I was sure he was a big player."

"I think he accidentally killed himself trying to escape." He frowned. "It's not what I was trying to do."

"Well, what's done is done." She looked hopeful. "Uh…so did you find anything in his office that could help me in my research into corruption?"

"Probably. And I wanted to give it to you now, but I don't have a storage device I can just let you keep."

"Not a problem," she reached into a pocket, "How much data do you have?"

"Half an Exabyte, I think."

She looked genuinely surprised. "What did you do? No wait, never mind." She produced two PIRADs and an OSD. "Here. This is a 2EB drive. There should be enough free space on it."

Shepard took the OSD, held it up close enough to his omnitool flextronics that the "smart" metamaterial snapped into place as if attracted by a magnet.

**OSD scanning. No active processes.**

He located the "Fist Files" icon and slid it toward the OSD, and selected **Move** from the options. As it began copying, he drew another potato stick out of the tray in his helmet. "Hey, I just got these from that little diner over there." He proffered the helmet toward her. "Have you tried them?"

"Are you kidding? I practically live on those things."

"Oh…then you've probably had enough."

"No, I love 'em," Emily shrugged. "Especially with wasabi."

His omnitool chirruped, Shepard removed the OSD and handed it to her. "There ya go. That OSD might have the information you're looking for."

She lit her own omnitool, clicked the OSD to it, and looked at its contents. "You must have captured his whole environment! This could be even bigger than I'd hoped!" She looked up from her gauntlet suddenly, looking around for anyone else. "Here, Commander. For your trouble." She adjusted her omnitool, and his ARO scrolled out another message:

**Payment offered from Emily Wong:** **GCr38667**

"I really really really appreciate what you've done," she continued, "We'll expose his whole network. This will help a lot of people when we take it to the Council Equity Authority. You have no idea."

He nodded absently, accepted the payment. _This is a very different world_, he thought. "Yeah…I kind of do. That's why I wanted to get it to you. But it's still nice to hear that it will help." He leaned the opening of his helmet toward her again. "You want some of these? I don't know if I can finish them myself."

She reached into the helmet and grabbed a small handful. "Thanks…so is your investigation over now?"

Shepard drew another warm potato stick out of the helmet and regarded it, then looked up at Emily. "My investigation hasn't _really_ begun. Fist was collateral damage."

Emily stopped, potato stick halfway to her mouth and goggled at him. "What? What do you mean? Who are you after?"

"Hmm…I'm not sure how public it's supposed to be…"

"What if I just kept it to, 'A highly-placed and reliable source that requested anonymity'?"

"Ehhh…" Shepard's gaze wandered across the view of the Ward Arms, watching the moving lights of skycars and starships.

"What happened to 'transparency and accountability'?" She moved her head, trying to get his attention back. "Wait a minute. Are you investigating one of the _Councillors_?"

"I'm sorry…I just don't know what I can give you at this point. But what would my future cooperation be worth? Say…an interview when my investigation is over?"

"_Exclusive?_ You talk to me before you talk to anyone else? That would be worth a lot to me, and my editor would be very happy to compensate you accordingly. How much were you thinking about?"

He shook his head, "I'm not after money, I'm just trying to make this a Win for everyone."

Emily glanced down at her omnitool again; Shepard could see the gauntlet display was already filling with notifications. She looked back up at him. "Well, we need more like you. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to find out what else is in this DCE." She turned left and stepped away quickly, working her omnitool. As she did, another window popped up:

**Payment offered from Emily Wong:** **GCr38667**

Accepted.

Shepard looked up from his omnitool, glanced after the rapidly-moving form of the reporter, and then out at the Citadel again. He shook his head. _This is just a completely different world_, he thought. _I just got a month's pay for doing what I was going to do anyway._

He gestured for RTM. **Captain, is this a good time to message you?**

** Sure. Udina's doing most of the talking right now, and he sure knows his way around the bureaucracy.**

**Sir, do we seriously want to bring a quarian aboard as a civilian consultant?**

** If we're going to be fighting the geth, it'd be a good idea to have an expert handy.**

**Yes sir, but quarian biology is very very different from human. I don't know if we're equipped for it. I also have concerns about having an alien aboard a ship so new it hasn't even been fully serviced after shakedown. Technically, we haven't even been on our first real mission.**

There was an unusually long pause. Shepard took a step down into what seemed to be a kind of viewing area that looked out over the Citadel. The backglow from the Syncee Bubble gave the scene a midnight blue/violet look, and it reminded Shepard of the first time he had seen a city on Earth at night…

** Commander, you have to realize that the asari were discovering the Citadel when Nebuchadnezzar was burning Jerusalem to the ground. Never forget this. We are the greenest of green beans at this table. They all know more than we do, have been here longer, and know how things work.**

Shepard was still looking out over the view of the Citadel, the words of Captain Anderson glowing over it, noticing that RTM VIs often struggled with punctuation.

** If you learn only one thing from Udina, remember that he was the one who thought that bringing the quarian was a good idea. If she's volunteering to work with us for room and board, and she wants a crate of her very own, you make sure she gets the nicest crate you can find.**

**I'll put the paperwork through right away, sir. The printers and pods can probably be reconfigured.**

Anderson was quiet for a moment.

** The quarians have had it tough. You want to win undying loyalty? Just be nice to 'em. Be a champion. Those little techies will turn lead into gold for you.**

Shepard leaned forward on the rail, no longer seeing the Citadel. You're talking like. Like you're getting ready to leave, sir.

** Aw hell, I don't mean it like that. I forget things sound different on RTM instead of hear me say them. I'm just talking about how to treat people. Though with Nihlus out of commission, I'm not sure who they'll get to mentor you. And. This situation might be about to change. We'll talk later, OK?**

_We'll talk later_ was the way Captain Anderson ended conversations.

**Very good, sir. We'll be awaiting your call.** Shepard was left leaning against the rail, looking out over a vast, advanced alien landscape. He sighed deeply, and had just noticed an unfamiliar but distinctive fragrance from the mélange of Citadel air when he heard a familiar voice.

"Commander?"

Looking up, he saw Ash and Kaidan approaching. His countdown timer showed he still had about three minutes before he was supposed to meet them at the clinic. He stood, turned to face them, waved a thumb over his shoulder. "I think this is the view we were promised." The two soldiers approached the rail and leaned on it as well.

Kaidan shook his head in awe. "Big place!"

Ash teased, "That your…_professional_ opinion, sir?"

Shepard nodded without looking away from the scene. "This isn't a station. It's not even a _city_. How can they keep tabs on all of this? The Presidium may as well be on another planet."

"There is definitely a gap between their presentation and what's here," Kaidan agreed, "There must be _millions_ here. It can't be _possible_ to track everyone coming and going. At best, it's a nightmare."

"It makes Jump Zero look like a porta-john," Ash admitted, "And it's the largest deep-space station the Alliance has."

Kaidan nodded, still staring across the view. "Jump Zero is big. But this is a whole 'nother scale. Look at the ward arms. How do they keep all that mass from flying apart?"

Ash looked toward Kaidan in disbelief. "You're kidding, right? The whole place runs on FM. Tons of FM. They probably have to import it from other planets."

Shepard drew his Equalizer-VI, sighted the end of a ward arm.

**43000m**, read the rangefinder.

"Hey, that's not a Volkov, but it uses the same chassis," Ash observed.

Shepard looked up. "No, it's a Haliat Equalizer." He turned and presented the weapon to her. "Here, try it. Most of their stuff borrows from other developers, but this is one of the few designs that doesn't trade reliability for power."

Ash sighted on the tip of a ward arm. "Hm. Nice and stable. Modded?"

"Yes, actually. But even stock, it's as stable as the best Avenger, and hits half again as hard."

"Where'd you get it?"

"Mission with some turians. I was attached as a tech, to give the Alliance had some direct visibility. One time when the CO and I were talking, I found out he collected human weapons. Traded him my Striker-IV for that. It wasn't quite as stable without the mod, but like I said, it hits like a mortar."

"But it's a turian weapon, isn't it? Nothing to do with that…pirate warlord." She offered the rifle back to him.

Shepard replaced the rifle on his SmartPak, shaking his head. "Definitely turian. I suspect that the guy started using that name to cause confusion."

The three Alliance soldiers gazed out over the awesome view for a moment more.

"The Council represents more races than I thought," Shepard mused. "No wonder the Council treats us like outsiders. They gotta be careful; we're just another drop in a bucket they already can't carry."

"They must figure us for one more gang of FNGs looking for a handout."

Shepard chewed a lip in thought for a moment. "I doubt it's personal. It's got to be a balancing act, like every other government. They probably just want to…keep everything running. It has to be hard getting all these cultures to work together."

"Or maybe they just don't like humans," Ash grumped.

"Why not? We've got oceans, beautiful women, this emotion called love…according to the old vids, we've got everything they want."

Ash smirked. "If you expect to get _me_ in a tinfoil miniskirt and thigh-high boots, I want _dinner _first." She turned to Shepard with a saucy look on her face, and saw his startled and slightly baffled expression. Thinking she had made a mistake, she backpedalled quickly, "Uh…_sir_."

"_That_ will be enough, Chief," Kaidan chuckled.

"Aw, it's all right," Shepard waved dismissively. "I can't see her in a miniskirt anyway."

"Damn straight you can't. She wants _dinner_ first," Kaidan laughed. "My kind of girl!"

Shepard continued to look at the view for another few seconds, and finally said, "Well, we may just _be_ a bunch of FNGs, but that doesn't mean we need to make it obvious. We keep gawking at the nebula and we'll sunburn the roofs of our mouths. Let's get going."

**# # #**

Stepping into the Clinic, they found Tali sitting on the floor with an open crate behind her, surrounded by techno-debris, and her omnitool gauntlet lit, but in her lap.

Shepard looked at her; his ARO displayed her name, advising on best form of address. "Tali'Zorah. I'm impressed; you caught up so fast you're already here."

Tali looked up at him. "Oh. Yes." He had no way to know she was smiling except the cheerfulness of her reply.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

"Doctor Michel had a new bed delivered, and I promised to put it together for her. But it looks like it's missing some parts, and there are some 'accessories' that it's kind of useless without."

"Missing parts? Isn't it new?"

"New? This?" Tali looked around at the array of parts. "No, this is last year's Stryker FullAuto. It looks like it was salvaged, because it's been used, but they cleaned it up and reboxed it…probably for resale."

Shepard's ARO began to paint the scene with spectrometer analysis of individual components; the parts were indeed a few months old.

"But the manipulators are new; they only have a few hours on them." She held up an assembly that looked like a robotic arm with an octopus for a hand. "Underbed imager's new, too. I was about to put it together, but I didn't want to start until I had a good idea of what I have and what I need. It won't take long." She went straight to work.

"It's very kind of her, I hope there's not a problem," Doctor Michel said as she approached. "And by the way, Commander, I never properly thanked you for saving me from Fist's thugs. I don't know what would have happened if you hadn't been there."

Shepard could tell that he was being redirected, but played along. "I'm just glad you weren't hurt."

"Me, too. Now, is there anything _you_ needed?"

Displa**iD** had identified the Doctor and rolled out a three-line CV. "No, but thanks for asking," Shepard said as he read the short bio. "With you running a free clinic, I half expected you to be a recent grad, trying to get your residency. But you're a doctor. How did you end up here on the Citadel?"

"My parents brought me here when I was young. My father was a medic with the Alliance. I chose to keep the medical tradition alive, but not the military; fixing up wounded soldiers isn't my idea of fun." She seemed to catch herself too late. "Not that I don't want to help soldiers, but I don't have the heart to have so many injuries become casualties." She shook her head. "Which reminds me. I think your soldier will be fine. Jenkins, yes?"

Shepard indicated the young soldier. "Yes. So…how's he doing?"

The doctor turned. "I don't get a lot of combat shock here. It's really good that the other soldier brought him so quickly, so I can treat it like a SEPTSD case. I started him on a course of Neurelease. He should be done in a few minutes.

"Because he hasn't had any REM sleep since it happened, I am trying to restore him to a pre-event state. But I suspect that whatever traumatized him would do so again in the future." She turned back to look at Shepard. "Did he ask to go home?"

Shepard and Kaidan exchanged a glance. "Yup. Couple of times," Kaidan said.

"I'm sure we can get him desk work until the end of his commitment," Shepard said. He looked past the doctor toward Jenkins, lying on one of the beds with a white-and-green frame helmet covering part of his head and face. "Well, he's not dead, so that's good," Shepard said.

"And we have Williams as a replacement for a ground team," Kaidan added.

"Technically a fireteam, but only three…not a full squad." Shepard mused. He lit his omnitool and summoned information as the doctor turned to the bed to check its analysis and status. "We have some weapon-rated specialists, but no one else combat-ready. Maybe the skipper planned to pick up a transfer or two while we were here?" He looked up hopefully at the biotic.

Kaidan shook his head. "If he did, he didn't tell me anything about it."

"I can hold my own in a fight," Tali was suddenly at Shepard's side.

He looked back to where he had seen her sitting a moment ago. The exam table had been neatly pushed against the wall after assembly; green status lights suggested it was ready for use. "That was quick. Is that thing ready to go?"

"As good as new." She still sounded unusually chipper, "I even downloaded the aftermarket VI for it. It'll help the doctor if there are too many injuries for her to handle alone."

Kaidan stepped over to the exam table, looking closely at it. "That was awfully fast," he shook his head in amazement. "I thought you said it was missing parts. You sure about this?"

"Sure I'm sure. It was missing the onboard GPC, so I reconfigured it to use DCE. You just have to know where to tickle them. I'd trust it with my life." She looked at Shepard again, tilited her head curiously, pointed at the helmet in its crispy-potato-stick-carrying-mode. "You're going to smell those things for days. You know that, don't you?"

"Not after we get back to the ship," Shepard looked down into it, ate the last fingerful of sticks and fed the tray into his disassembler, "I took a shot in the head in that last firefight. It saved my life, but now I can't open it fully, _or_ collapse it. Probably have to get it replaced."

"Mind if I have a look at it?"

He shrugged and handed it to her.

Ash spoke from across the room, "Commander, you want me to stay with the Corporal and get him back to the ship as soon as he's done here?"

Shepard looked to the doctor. "Do you have a solid time on when he'll be done?"

Doctor Michel lit her omnitool. "Hm. He should be ready to go in a few minutes, actually."

Shepard glanced once more at the quarian as he walked over to the bed: Her omnitool was aglow, and she was turning the helmet slowly in her other hand. He spoke to Kaidan and Ash, "That reminds me. I wanted to take you all out for a meal. We haven't really had a chance to get to know each other, and being on the Citadel presents an unusual opportunity. I found a nice place on my way over here, but I didn't want to start eating, and then have to break to present to the Council. So if we can wait until after that, we'll eat then."

"I'm game," Kaidan said, "but I'm carrying supplements."

Ash grinned at him. "Never skip a chance to eat, sleep, or pee."

After a pause, all three found themselves looking awkwardly at Richard.

Sitting in a chair next to the bed, Ash subtly manipulated Richard's forearm just below the elbow and bent it up so it looked like he was raising his hand.

On the other side of the bed but still standing, Kaidan pointed at the unconscious soldier. "He wants to eat, too."

Ash nodded in agreement.

Shepard chuckled. "If there's one thing I like in a team, it's teamwork."

There was an explosive BANG from behind him; Shepard turned instantly, pistol drawn. When he saw only the quarian, the pistol's muzzle went up toward the ceiling. "Did you do that?"

The quarian hardly had time to react to having a gun pointed at her; she reached down to the bed where the helmet had fallen, looked down and pointed at a particular place on it. "Sorry. The point of impact in the armor spanned at least six of the pleats. I didn't want to do them one at a time and damage it."

The helmet she was holding was halfway changed from its collapsed mode to hardsuit mode. Shepard's ARO informed him that the compactor struts he could see were glowing faintly in the infrared. As Tali manipulated her omnitool, the helmet made soft whirring and sliding noises as it continued to morph slowly from one step to the next in its decompaction sequence, as if the helmet itself was unsure if it was going to work or not.

"Decompaction isn't all that hard, it's just complex, and normally it works very, very fast…like protein folding. In Keelish, we use the words for 'carbon' and 'folding', though the word means something more like what you do with a deck of cards." She was speaking very quickly, "The armor was bent against the pleat-ladder, so it couldn't fully open or close without jamming against the next one. I had to break it along all the pleats at once.

With each repetition, the helmet opened or closed a little faster than before.

Kaidan moved closer, squinting. "How are you doing that?"

The quarian held the helmet up a little higher so Kaidan could see, "When it's in Service Mode, you can control the configuration change, stop it at any point to figure out what's wrong. Normally, this stuff happens almost at once; the fold times for each assembly have a lot of overlap."

"You have an app for this?"

"Your VI will tell you about it if you switch to Service Mode. But you probably don't use it, so your VI may never bring it up. The Alliance just gives you another helmet, right? It's too easy to get a new one, so there's no value in learning how to make repairs. The reason you think of my people as scavengers is…" she cut herself off. "No. I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said that." She twisted her hand from left to right and back again, scrolling the helmet both directions through its compaction/decompaction cycle, and handed it back to Shepard. "There. As good as new. Well…except for the chroma-coat. The carbon self-heals because of the CVD." She continued to point at it, stopping as her VI advised.

He took it, turned it over in his hands, then squeezed his head back into it. His suit gave a two-tone signal as the connectors chunked into place, and the helmet immediately collapsed itself. After a pause, it decompacted back into place again, and its status light switched from yellow to green.

He tapped the helmet thoughtfully, turned his head from one side to the other, touched a control on his omnitool to collapse the helmet again. "Well the value of being able to make repairs that fast and that thorough in the battlefield is almost inestimable," he extended his hand toward Tali, "Absolutely brilliant. Welcome to the team, Miss Tali'Zorah nar Rayya."

Tali looked up and smiled, and stood rather taller for a moment as she took his hand in the alien greeting he offered. "Thank you, Commander Stephen Shepard. I will do my best to be worthy of your welcome."

In the silence that followed, the doctor - speaking softly already, further muted by distance and orientation - said, "Welcome back, Richard. How do you feel?"

The _Normandy_ soldiers turned and gathered quickly at his bedside.

Richard was blinking rapidly and looking around in confusion. "How did…uh…where am I?"

"You're in the Sector Twelve clinic, run by me, Doctor Chloe Michel. You've just awakened from a Tier Three Course of Neurelease. You may have some fuzzy memories about today, but you should be otherwise unaffected. And feeling much better after your nap."

"I'm feeling hungry." He looked around at the other soldiers. "Oh…hi, Commander. Lieutenant." He smiled warmly. "Chief."

Ash's eyebrows rose as she pulled her head back slightly. "What does _that_ look mean?"

"Different kind of hungry, I suppose," Kaidan grinned.

"Schweinhund." Ash's left hand shot out and punched him in the right shoulder; he reeled to the left but only laughed.

Shepard was still watching the young soldier. "Welcome back, Corporal. How do you feel?"

He shrugged and blinked a few times as he looked around. "Like I just woke up. I remember…the Chief brought me here right after the the fight, but it looks like everyone's here. Um, where's the head, sir?"

Shepard looked to Doctor Michel, who pointed out into the clinic foyer. "There's only one, but if it's in use, the door will have a red stripe."

Rich nodded and got up, seemed only a tiny bit unsteady as he stepped away.

"Maybe a standing meal is the best choice for now," Shepard didn't look up from his omnitool. "It'll let us leave in a hurry if we need to, but still get some food."

Kaidan exchanged a glance with Ash. "Sounds good to me. Better than waiting until after."

Doctor Michel had been studying the displays over the bed; she looked up at them and pointed antispinward. "If you're hungry, I should warn you that what Flux serves is about as appetizing as toothpaste. But there's a really good place just on the other side of the plaza."

Shepard was nodding. "I found it by accident on my way back here. Yes, it's quite good. Always nice to get a recommendation from the locals, though. Thank you."

"It's my pleasure," the doctor held out a glowing icon. "I've posted the report on Corporal Jenkins to the Alliance hub for your Chief Flight Surgeon. Here is a local copy so you don't have to try to find it."

"Thank you." Shepard took the holotoken and touched it to his omnitool gauntlet. "I suppose we'll be going now. Thank you for all your help, Doctor."

"Goodbye, Commander. Nice talking to you." She moved to her desk and picked up a tablet as Jenkins stepped out of the door on their left. His smile seemed faintly vacuous. "We're going to go eat, right?"

Shepard looked over his shoulder at Kaidan, then at Richard. "You been taking lessons from him?"

"Hey, I resemble that remark," the biotic grinned.

***** Glossary *****

Ack: short form of "acknowledged."

ARO: Augmented Reality Overlay, a sort of "Heads-Up Display" for real life. Glucose-powered cybernetics added to the frontal neocortex.

CO: Commanding Officer

DCE: Distributed Computing Environment

Displa**iD**: a social media app for financial exchanges and identification, etc.

Exabyte: 1000 Petabytes

GCr: Galactic Credits - standardized medium of exchange in Citadel space, and generally used around the galaxy.

GPC: General Purpose Computer

FM: Effing Magic

FNG: Effing New Guy

OSD: Optical Storage Device - relatively low-cost non-volatile data storage device, impervious to electromagnetic interference.

Petabyte: 1000 Terabytes

PIRAD: removable storage that can also function as secondary system memory.

RTM: Realtime Messaging

SEPTSD: (pronounced "septsid") Single Event Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

Terabyte: 1000 Gigabytes


	20. Chapter 20: Consorting

A/N: Sorry this is a fortnight late, but it's also nearly twice as long as my self-imposed 4-5K word target. Also, it's been pointed out to me that there's not nearly enough description of people and places as there would be in a conventional "tie-in." I suppose I've been assuming that only people who were already familiar with the story were reading it. For anyone who's not, you can watch almost any paragon video playthrough on YouTube. Sorry if that sounds like a cop-out; there's a lot to do and describe anyway. At this pace, I can easily see this hitting a million words, and still not cover all the side quests. But I will hold the line!

*** Consorting ***

The five of them exited the clinic and turned right. After flexing the helmet open and closed a few more times, Shepard looked over his shoulder at Tali. "As part of the team, you're welcome to join us, but as I recall, you won't be removing your helmet. I must confess I'm not sure how you normally eat."

Tali stepped up alongside him and answered eagerly, "This is a Gorugo-B exosuit, named after its designer. It has a…relatively small chowlock, but it can disassemble food with sufficient resolution for neutralizing of individual pathogenic microbes. It's great when you can't find anything to eat from a trusted source, because you can just start putting things into it that might be edible. Only material of nutritional value gets through."

Shepard pondered this for a moment as they walked. "So…it'd require something to reassemble the food after processing, wouldn't it?"

"Only if you insist on having the same texture…and using one requires wearing it inside the 'clean line.' I could get it, but it would make my helmet even front-heavier. If I trust the source, I can bypass the disassembler. Otherwise, anything that gets past it is a paste. I'm told it's about as thick as your peanut butter or ketchup, depending on what goes in."

"Hm." Shepard glanced at her helmet, tried not to stare. "So that's not like a volus suit; you breathe the same air and so on?"

"Right, it's usually only functioning like a filtration system, but it's very easy to switch to a biosuit mode. That's why quarians often get EVA work; we're usually in a state of readiness to go outside at a moment's notice. We drink water like you do, and other things like liquor that don't have chirality. But for things that do, there's a small but significant chance that it could kill me that's even higher than the chance it could kill a turian."

Shepard knew about that, having worked with the turian Corps of Engineers. "Why is it higher for you?"

"Uh…it's complicated. Do you really want to know?"

He smiled to himself. "Sure…better to hear it straight from someone who lives it, I would think."

Shepard could only see that she had tilted her head and paused when she looked at him. "Our autoimmune systems are optimized for the flora and fauna of our homeworld, particularly the microbial life. Unlike you, they don't live inside us as well…so they must be constantly replenished. On the homeworld, Rannoch, this wasn't a problem. We were breathing them and eating them continuously. But when we lost our homeworld, we lost the ecosystem that produced them, and thereby supported us. So now we have to be very careful who and what we get exposed to, even among ourselves.

"One of the most important functions of the liveships isn't the food they produce as much as the microbes they churn out, which we take as supplements, and which end up in the food by design. The only reason the ships existed before the Geth Rebellion was because they used to circulate between the colony worlds, sort of bombing the colonies themselves from orbit with the little things. In fact, if we hadn't already had them, we wouldn't have been able to evacuate. That's why we call them _live_ships instead of _food_ships, see?"

"I do indeed," Shepard nodded. "How interesting."

The food stand on their right spanned a curve in the wall; they group stopped when Shepard did. The clerk waited for Tali to finish. "Welcome back," she said. "Quite a team you've got there."

"Thanks," he took one step to the side, "Feed 'em whatever they want; I'm buyin'." He gestured at his omnitool, selected an icon and placed its holographic representation on the kiosk's icon target.

Richard had been looking through the glass partition. "Is that real meat?" he asked.

"Sure is." The clerk smiled proudly. Shepard's ARO finally added Displa**iD** info about her: **K.C. Newton**

"Not folded or dehydrated?"

She shrugged. "Well, it _is_ reconstituted, but it's not printed. A girl can only do so much."

"You should come to Eden Prime." Shepard noticed the Corporal stood a little straighter and puffed his chest out. "We grow food animals that have been extinct for thousands of years!"

"Really? Wow, that's amazing!"

Shepard reached out and touched Richard's shoulder. "Order first, then talk. We have to eat while walking."

"Oh. Sorry, sir." He looked up quickly at the kiosk display, touched a square with a graphic and stepped back.

K.C. looked at her side of the kiosk to see what he'd ordered and nodded to herself. "I thought someone might order the ol' burger and fries, so I started it as soon as I saw you coming. They're not as good for you as engineered food, but who can resist?" A dark brown patty flipped into the air in front her, and she swatted it down precisely onto the tiny cooking surface with a copper spatula. Without missing a beat, she began to arrange lettuce, tomato, pickle, and onion on the bottom half of the bun.

She made passing eye contact with Richard. "The potatoes I get from some aeroponics in Tayseri Ward. There's an elcor who likes to watch them grow, so he lets me keep a few racks of them in his home."

"An elcor?" Shepard cast an amused glance at Kaidan. "Do you ever get _mashed_ potatoes by mistake?"

"Oh, be nice. They're big and heavy but they're not clumsy. He really likes it here on the low-gravity Citadel because it makes him feel so young again."

Kaidan had been watching her work. "You're pretty handy with that stuff."

She laughed. "You only think that because I'm not trying to show off."

"What?"

"That's when I start dropping things." She tossed the spatula into the air and caught it easily. "Well, sometimes." Focusing on her workspace, she continued, "So, do you know what you want?"

Kaidan shrugged, and touched another square on the kiosk. "Yeah, how about the ol' Roast Beef sandwich. On rye, please. Hot mustard if you've got it."

"I do." She flipped Richard's burger again. "Pickle or slaw?" She glanced up at Kaidan. "Slaw's fresh. Made it this morning."

"I'll take the slaw, then." He watched her working. "This is quite a show."

"Thanks." She smiled and looked back down, watching the color of the patty change. "It's easy, and I do it because it lets me talk to people. The slaw is my dad's recipie. I like it right before it goes bad; it gets tangy, and has more fermenting bacteria." Flapping the burger atop the bun bottom, she looked at Richard. "You want ketchup, mayo, mustard?"

"Sure!"

With a self-heating knife, she carved a few millimeters off the end of a block of soft material that looked like a neapolitan of red, white, and yellow, slathered it on the bun top, and impaled it atop the patty with a toothpick. Scooting the burger to the side with a tray of the potato sticks, she lifted the plastic plate to counter height, and pushed it toward Richard. "There you go." She made eye contact with Kaidan as she walked to the other end of the counter again. "And now for your sandwich. This will be a _cold_ sandwich…unless you want it hotted up?"

"Not a chance," Kaidan shook his head. "Aren't you catering to just humans? There aren't very many here, at least not as many as there are of the Council races."

Looking up from the rye, she shook her head. "You would _amazed_. I actually serve a lot more asari than humans. I suppose because it's exotic for them; they just love hamburgers for some reason, especially with sweet pickle relish. Fries, not so much." She laughed in recollection, "It gets absolutely _crazy_ here when a big conference blows into town. Big tippers, too; I think they enjoy that I'm not using biotics, or if I am, they think the precision of control I have is simply unbelievable." She looked to Ash. "Know what you want yet, ma'am?"

Ash looked at her oddly, still not sure what to make of this girl who looked like she wasn't even out of University yet. "Oh…whatever." She looked quickly at the menu. "Grilled chicken salad." She looked at Shepard, "That's easy to eat on the go."

"Grilled chicken salad…" the girl repeated the order softly, glancing down at the other end of the counter. "Frank, carve up a chicken for a garden drag." From the counter came a whine of fast servos. Shepard, leaning against the wall, watched the two cooking mitts as they sprang from their garage, slid quickly around the curve to the end of the counter near him. With a flick of motion, the mitts were tossed into a translucent holder; articulated cybernetic hands that had been under them grabbed a cooking knife, and retrieved a piece of meat from a chilled dispenser; the first made short work of the second. The VI-controlled hands scattered the resulting cubes onto a cooktop.

"Hey, this is good," Richard lifted his hand with the burger in a sort of salute.

Shepard saw the clerk smile to herself as she continued to work her way along the preparation counter.

Ash raised an eyebrow at the young Corporal. "Waitin' for us like one pig waits for another?"

Richard – mouth full – stopped chewing, nodded impishly, and resumed chewing. "Mm-hmm. But…why are we in a hurry, ma'am?"

"That's what you get for sleeping through meetings," Ash teased. "Captain Anderson and the ambassador are taking…uh," her VI prompted her with the quarian's name again, "Tali'Zorah's evidence to the Council."

"And we don't know how long it will take the ambassador to get them to look at it, so we have to be Ready-5," Shepard added. "We don't want to start anything that can't be interrupted easily."

A plastic plate with a sandwich clattered atop the counter. "Here's the roast beef on rye, with slaw." She added a trayful of thinly sliced cabbage to the plate, and pushed it closer to Kaidan, looked at Shepard. "Know what you'd like, Captain?"

"Not yet, but I'm about to find out. And it's just Commander." He tapped his collar where his rank bars would have been displayed and turned to Richard, "So how is that? As good as a genuine bronto-burger?"

Even through his munching, Richard managed a smile, but shook his head. "Mm-mm. No, sir; they aren't selling those yet. I think they're trying to tweak it for the environment." He glanced at the young entrepreneur. "But it's as good as a home-grilled angus."

**Angus: Species of bovine, favored for its texture, flavor, and quick growth**, Shepard's VI clarified. He looked at the kiosk again. "I'll have a burger as well, but since I had the fries, I'll have apples. Can you put them right on the burger?"

"Sure thing," she said. "Thanks." She took the chicken from the Helping Hands, scattered it over the trayful of salad, and set it on the counter. "There you go, ma'am. Enjoy!"

"Can I have hashi with those?"

"You bet; they're to the left of the condiments." As she pointed, she turned her head and spoke quickly to the VI cybernetics, "Start another burger." The hands simultaneously signaled an _Okay_ with thumb and forefinger, and slid back down to the end of the counter with a servo whir. She looked to the Commander. "Burger with apples on, comin' up."

Shepard turned to Tali. "This is supposed to be in your honor," he shrugged, "But I suppose I should have picked a place that serves food you can actually eat."

"It's not a problem," Tali tried to reassure him, "I ate at Fist's. They have a dextro menu, and it was one of the best meals I've had in…weeks."

"Glad we got you out of there okay; it couldn't have been much closer."

"You can say that again." Tali tilted her head after reading the _human idiom of agreement_ from her prompter VI. "But please, don't feel bad about my not eating _now_." She looked at the other two humans who were eating and chatting, then back at Shepard. "Humans socialize while eating, too?"

"It's one of our favorite excuses." He had been watched the VI hands preparing the hamburger, pointed through the glass partition. "Did you actually buy a VI for this task?"

K.C. looked up only briefly. "No, I taught them myself. The learning is really fast." She had arranged the bun and some of the extras on it by the time the Helping Hands presented her with a quick-grilled patty.

Kaidan teased, "No flourish with the spatula?"

"I didn't teach 'em to show off. That's _my_ job."

Shepard nodded to himself, touched the kiosk and nudged it to apply a 30% tip.

Between bites, Richard asked, "Sir? If it's not too much trouble, can we go to Sha'ira's?"

Ash gave him a look. "What? Are you _nuts_?"

"Maybe we can just see what she looks like," he said, "I mean, she must be drop-dead gorgeous, right?"

"You could look her up if you really care." The Gunnery Chief looked across the plaza. "There might even be a PVR interaction with her if she's all that much of a wonk object."

"Yeah, but that's not the same as seeing her in person." He looked toward Shepard. "I just want to be able to say I actually saw her. Otherwise, it'd be like…like going to Earth and not visiting the British Museum."

"British Museum?" Kaidan snorted. "I'm from Earth, and if you're going to do only one thing, I don't know if that's it."

"Well, that's the one my dad said to do, and I've walked through the 2D PVR from his visit. I thought it looked pretty neat. My mom's family is from Shooter's Hill, so I'd have a place to stay."

Shepard had taken his burger to the end of the counter, added some barbecue sauce, and looked guiltily at Tali. He asked the clerk, "Do you have a dextro menu?"

She looked up and shook her head. "I'm really sorry. I don't. It's just me and I'd have to purge my hands between food types to keep it safe. I've thought about using Frank for that, since he can have his garage converted into an autoclave, but it's a little beyond me right now."

Ash picked a piece of chicken out of the salad with her chopsticks and studied it for a moment, then spoke to Richard. "So about this Consort? The way that bartender was talking her up, it seems like she must have all the dirt on her clients. And you'd be one of 'em."

Richard's omnitool displayed some potentially helpful data for him. "That's just a rumor. Even if she knew something, the Consort would never reveal her secrets."

Kaidan dropped the small tray – now empty of slaw – into the wall-mounted recycler slot. "Of course she wouldn't. She'd be tossed out the nearest airlock if she did."

Richard shrugged. "I suppose. But even so, the Consort's nothing like the girls back on the colonies. She's…she's just…"

"You don't have to _do it_ with her," Kaidan added, "That probably costs _real_ big. You could just talk to her if you want. But it might still cost by the minute."

"Is that all you want to do?" Ash raised an eyebrow mischievously, "_Talk_ to her?" Her smile grew as she waited for the Corporal to answer. "Ha! I'll bet you do!"

Richard looked like he was partly embarrassed, partly willing to play back. "Shut up, ma'am."

Ash took a step back as she belly laughed, still managing to keep her tray balanced.

Kaidan had an amused expression, and patted Richard – who was watching the Commander nervously – on the shoulder. "Relax, Jenkins. This isn't an inspection."

The Commander shrugged. "All I know is what I heard from the bartender. You must have done some digging on your own…so what can you tell me about this consort?"

"I, uh…well, she's an asari…who works here as…uh…who _helps people_ with…things."

K.C. looked up from behind the counter, and asked, "So you don't really want to go spend the money to see her, do you? You're just hoping to catch sight of her…to say you _saw her. _To go celebrity-spotting, right?"

Richard spoke to Shepard as if he had asked the question. "Uh…yeah. Sir. I couldn't possibly afford it. It costs half a year's pay just to go in and talk to her."

Shepard was doubtful. "I assume then that you know where to find her?"

Richard pointed back the way they had come, "Sure…she's across the bridge from the embassy."

Ash turned to the Commander and said, "It _would_ put us close to the Council Tower."

"And we can break right off if we get the call from the skipper," Kaidan added.

Half-eaten burger in one hand, Shepard pointed to the two soldiers and said to Richard, "See this? Isn't it great having friends to back you up?"

The young man looked askance at them, and then back up at him, "Yeah…it is." He seemed sincere.

Shepard's ARO showed it had been about an hour since they left the embassy. "All right then…let's go."

Ash poked Richard in the back of the head with her index finger. "And remember to have fun…and _keep those eyeballs tucked in_, Corporal."

"Yes ma'am, I will. Remember to have fun. Ma'am."

**# # #**

Jack smiled.

It didn't happen very often, but when a long-term project like "Yeti Hunter" paid off bigger than he'd expected, that was what he did.

Cord-Hislop Aerospace had secured the spaceframe and engines subcontract for a new type of small, fast frigate by buying controlling interest in the original contractor, Rocketdyne-Boeing. Though his organization had already owned several voting fractions of the company through shell corporations, there had been _what looked like_ a sudden rush on the stock by an array of investors and brokerages, but was in fact a carefully orchestrated hostile takeover.

The warship concept, which had been in co-development with the Turian Heirarchy since 2178, effectively shoehorned the very latest and most powerful drive core design into the tiniest spaceframe that could still accommodate a main gun capable of accelerating a 200g slug to 60% of c (the speed of light.) A kiloton of supercooling and heat sinks would allow it to evade detection when needed. If it worked as well as the prototype refits and CCD data suggested, the result would be an unprecedented combination of speed, maneuverability, and stealth. One of his analysts had likened it to equipping a hummingbird with a cloaking device and a bazooka _without slowing it down_.

More importantly, it would give "his" people access to turian shipyard intelligence and technology.

As a bonus, the takeover had given him direct access to the plans, and after examining them, Jack found that he rather liked the ship; it was unusual. Even…_artful_.

It would take some time, but he decided to have one built as a personal yacht, perhaps to function as a mobile command centre. It had come as something of a disappointment to learn that the Alliance had redesigned the ship, trading displacement for more speed. It also meant the new design would be unable to accommodate the UT-47 Kodiak, though it would be easier for the ship to land.

The design overhaul was severe enough that – after months of government bureaucracy trying to wring more money out of the project – the original spaceframe had been stripped of any potentially revealing technology and put up for sale at cost.

_At cost._

Jack Harper nodded with satisfaction.

And then he smiled.

**# # #**

They ate as they walked back to the taxi stand near the markets.

Shepard gestured ahead, spoke to Kaidan. "Did you find anything at these shops?"

"Two Ex FMCs, but they were bundled with some crapware, and they didn't have an OEM kit for less."

"Hm. Too bad." He waved his hand through the Taxi Call holo; it turned green as a nondescript aircar rose into place from below the deck, and the protective wall lowered to let them board.

The air taxi had two seats in front and a bench seat in the rear. Shepard pointed to the rear section, "All right: Alliance team, pack 'em in there. Jenkins, I think you're the smallest in full armor, would you take the center seat?"

He nodded, "Right away, sir."

As the Alliance soldiers boarded, Shepard noticed that the quarian was still standing away from the aircar.

"You're not afraid to fly, are you?"

"No, I'm just…uh, no." She shook her head. "No, I'm not."

He pointed across to the right front seat. "Okay; hop in."

She seemed almost dazed as she stepped over the console and settled into the front-right seat.

Shepard reached in and touched the navigation control. "Human embassy." As he lowered himself into the seat, the holo displayed several choices of route, selected the most economical, and highlighted it. He noticed that the quarian still seemed to be looking around at the interior of the taxi. "You all right there?"

She looked at him quickly. "Yes…uh, thank you."

He shrugged, "I figure if I can't get you something to eat at your own _Welcome Aboard_ lunch, the least I can do is let you have the good seat for our little jaunt back to the embassy."

The doors closed and thunked with quiet confidence, the taxi lifted away from the station and accelerated. The quarian continued to look at him, but gave no other clue of what she was thinking. "Thank you," she said at last. "That's…thoughtful of you."

The view of the station was dazzling, even better than from the observation deck. Traffic patterns and starscrapers illuminated the sky, with stars as backdrop. It was cut short abruptly as the taxi plunged into a transit corridor, rotating and then decelerating as it descended through the traffic corridor and came to a stop in front of the glossy columns at the embassy entrance.

** RJenkins: Could we have taken the taxi directly to the Consort's, sir?** appeared on his ARO.

Shepard gestured for RTM and spoke his reply silently, **I wasn't thinking about that when we left. But it's close.**

The doors _kachunked_ open; the four of them followed Shepard as he started across the nearest bridge. He gestured subtly for VI Query.

_Get me walking directions to the Consort's_, he subvocalized.

His ARO added an overhead view as a transparent overlay, directional arrows pointing to the destination, the immediate path forward, and a distance countdown.

With puppy-like energy, Jenkins followed Shepard closely as they went to their left around a short detour wall marked with the number Nine; as he passed it, his ARO added a callout: **Sector indicator**.

_Hm_, he mused, _I suppose you can see those from anywhere on either side._

"Hey, look. More shops." Ash was pointing across the water and to the right. "You mind if the LT and I check 'em out?"

"That'd be fine, Chief. Whoever gets done first, meet where the others went." He looked for the quarian, who was lagging back a few paces. "You want to go shopping with them, or…'consorting' with us?"

The opaque helmet turned to face Shepard.

Kaidan pointed to the shops in response. "Lots of new tech," he said, "Might be something new to know."

Tali shrugged. "Maybe…" she said doubtfully. "Well, I suppose it might be fun." She spoke to the Commander, "Um…I guess I'll go shopping…if you don't mind."

"Not a bit. We'll see you again shortly."

As the group neared the end of the bridge, Commander and Corporal and turned down a ramp to their left, everyone else continued a few more paces and then turned right. As they descended it, Shepard saw human and a salarian sat on a bench, talking.

"I've had my office rearranged _five times_ by those things," the woman said.

"Five times…why? What do they want?"

"How should I know? It's not like they offer an explanation of what they're doing."

Shepard's VI noticed his attention on the conversation and adjusted mics on the back of his suit to continue monitoring.

"And yet everyone just lets them go on doing whatever it is they do," the salarian continued.

"What choice do we have? If you try to stop them, they just shut down and another one replaces it."

"It's just strange that we know so little about them."

"Not to mention frustrating."

Just as Shepard realized they might be talking about the Keepers, Jenkins stepped ahead of him and toggled the manual door control, waving the Commander through ahead of himself.

Shepard smiled: The security door would log Richard's entrance. Now anyone could verify he'd gone to see Sha'ira.

**# # #**

Unable to find herself centered, Sha'ira had cancelled or delayed two appointments since first waking.

The General's bitter response was wholly out of character; perhaps her refusal had unhinged the turian. But did the General actually think that telling Xeltan that she had compromised the elcor's tribal integrity would somehow endear him to her? Both the elcor and the turian continued to refuse her calls. The turn of events had left her distressed to the point of distraction, and she was unwilling to give less than her full attention to her clients.

She had told an acolyte of her troubles in roundabout terms, not naming the two others involved, and – goddess treasure her – the dear novice had offered shatash; Sha'ira had accepted partly out of a wish to regain her balance, but partly to let the young asari feel like she was helping.

The Consort rose from her vanity table; it collapsed back into the wall as her omnitool chimed.

**New/Unknown arrivals: Human Alliance: Commander Shepard, Corporal Jenkins**

She touched their names and the device's VI performed a cursory search for records about them. She flicked the analysis from her omnitool to the large display and waited as it ran out lists of their vitals and a brief examination of their public records.

The lower-ranking human's name sounded like the Thesserit word for a great leap (usually one performed with the assistance of biotic Lift.) It was a good omen, but he was very young and while he might be interested, might also be unable to help. The other was an officer, still very young for an asari, but probably mature for a human. He had little public presence other than what the most basic suite of automated lifetracking software generated…

But what she saw lifted her heart.

**# # #**

"Welcome, I am Nelyna." The asari pronounced her name so the humans would be able to parse it into their own language as she looked down at her data pillar, and then back up at them. "I…don't…recognize you as one of our expected clients today. Would you like me see when the Consort will be able to meet with you?"

Shepard noticed that Richard had a strangely blank look on his face; he seemed to be staring at the asari as if he'd never actually watched an episode of _Updater_. The Commander peered around the corner and into the large, elegantly-decorated lobby. "Can't we just go in?"

"M…I'm afraid not. You must understand that there are many who seek the Consort's services. But if you wish to leave your name, she'll make every effort to meet with you."

"What is the Consort? What does she do?"

"M…It's difficult to explain. She's many things to many people, and something different for each. Some seek her for advice, some for entertainment, others still for pleasure. Most of the time, our clients won't realize what they're seeking until after she has provided it for them."

**Use of single short tone denotes highly respectful answer to direct query, typical of asari from Dassus**. Shepard smiled at the factoid from his VI. It was finally learning to proactively display the kind of information he would have wanted to know without having to ask. "You make her sound like some kind of _oracle_."

"No, not in the usual sense. She's merely asari. An asari with remarkable compassion, and a generous spirit. I suggest you make an appointment and see for yourself."

Jenkins' head turned quickly to look at the Commander.

_Think you could be any more obvious?_ The thought made him smile. "I suppose I should have expected that. What do _you_ do here, Nelyna?"

"I'm one of the Consort's acolytes. Many of the people here today will not see the Consort, but they expect to be attended to just the same. It is our job to ensure they leave…_contented_."

"What exactly do you _attend to_?" Though he hadn't meant it to, the question came out as innuendo.

The asari seemed not to have noticed. "Well, each acolyte has her unique abilities. Some soothe with song, others with conversation…" Her hands were clasped in front of her; she twisted and flexed her fingers as if nervous, or unsure what to say. "As much as possible, we seek to match the the needs of our clients to the skills of our acolytes. My specialty is _touch_. My fingertips can find every tension point in your body…and relieve it."

It was difficult for Shepard to tell how much of what she said was simply rehearsed and well-delivered sales pitch, and how much was sincere, but his VI was not giving him any indication that he was being manipulated.

"Sounds interesting," he said. "Unfortunately, we have a meeting we can't get out of, and we're in a holding pattern at the moment. But if I did want to actually meet the Consort, what would it take?"

"I will add you to our client list." The data pillar warbled as she manipulated the holographic interface, studied the results. "We should be able to see you in…mmm…three or four months."

He shook his head. "Then don't bother. I have no idea where we'll be in three or four months. We may never dock at the Citadel again. I don't even expect to be here at the end of the day…" He thought briefly about the ship.

"Well, that's not for me to judge. I have your name, and you'll be contacted. Is there anything else?"

Shepard glanced at Jenkins, who looked back at him with an expression that pleaded, _Do something!_ Shepard waved a hand casually to his left, "Would you...mind if we just sat in your lobby for a few minutes? If the Consort just happened to walk by, that might be nice."

"Aw...I doubt you'll see her without an appointment, even in that way. But it is charming of you to have asked."

Shepard watched Richard deflate visibly even as she said _in that way_, and start to turn back out the door without even another look back. "Too bad for me, then. Thank you for your time…I suppose we'll be going."

"Aw, I hope you'll return again in the future. We always enjoy seeing new clients..."

As Shepard turned to speak a final farewell, he saw the asari was holding her hand near the side of her head. "Yes, Mistress?"

Richard looked back with a mix of disappointment and hope.

"Yes of course, Mistress." Nelyna looked at the Commander as she lowered her hand. "Huh! It appears the Consort has taken notice of you. She'd like to meet with you now."

Shepard's ARO highlighted the locations of the two cameras he could see. "What for?" Shepard asked.

"I don't know, you'll have to ask her yourself. Just head up the stairs over there," she indicated the far end of the room, "She'll be waiting for you."

He turned to his left and started away, making a casual gesture to Richard to follow.

As they walked past a salarian sitting alone at a chat table for four, he heard, "Even the _humans_ find the Consort irresistible."

Even with his helmet collapsed into the shoulderguard assembly, Shepard's VI utilized all the resources of the combat armor; at the moment, he was feeling so much like a "fish out of water" that he was actually glad the suit was eavesdropping for him; it gave him more information.

At the next table on the right, a volus was talking with another asari.

"Welcome. It is a pleasure to see you," said the asari.

"This is my first time," the volus gasped, "I can't believe I didn't come sooner."

"Please. Relax and enjoy yourself."

"I have to admit, I'm a little nervous."

The asari on the right was nodding just as they passed, "That's understandable. Many are a little unsure what to expect their first time."

"Don't get me wrong, I've only heard good things about the Consort, it's just…"

"The Unknown forces us out of our comfort zone. It forces us to be vulnerable."

"Exactly. That's just what I was thinking."

"Good. Then we are ready to begin…"

He was left with the impression that emotionally immature and _vulnerable_ people were being fleeced here. He also noticed that the staff were all dressed in the same clothes; an open-front gown that ran from pink at the top to deep magenta, over a blood-red one-piece Swissari "under." Matching long gloves covered forearms and even above the elbows, but left the fingers exposed.

Even the human at the top of the stairs was wearing exactly the same outfit. Shepard smiled to see another human in what he'd at first thought was an exclusively asari-operated establishment.

She asked, "You're with the Alliance? My brother's a private back on Earth."

"Earth's a good post if you're from there," Shepard didn't stop walking as he pointed up the stairs to the right. "I'm supposed to go see the Consort. I assume she's up here?"

"Yes she is," the girl smiled as she nodded. "The Consort is a _wonderful_ person; she has quite a gift. I hope she helps you find what you're looking for."

"That'd be nice. But I didn't ask for this meeting," Shepard said cryptically. He started up the stairs.

Richard caught her eye and smiled confidently.

# # #

As they descended from the bridge, Shepard turned to Tali and asked, "You want to go shopping with them, or…'consorting' with us?"

Kaidan gestured quickly for RTM: **Come with us.**

Tali looked quickly from Shepard to the biotic human and back.

Kaidan pointed to the shops in response. "Lots of new tech," he said, "Might be something new to know."

Tali shrugged. "Maybe…" she said doubtfully. "Well, I suppose it might be fun." She spoke to the Commander, "Um…I guess I'll go shopping…if you don't mind."

"Not a bit. We'll see you again shortly."

Tali activated RTM with a glance at her interactive HUD, and replied to Kaidan: **Glad to. But why?**

**He's trying to do something nice for Jenkins. Might get him to stay in the Alliance. It'd be better if they flew this mission alone.**

Tali's HUD informed her that Shepard had been shopping here already.

She messaged Kaidan: **Very well. But I have a question.**

Kaidan answered, **Sure. What is it?**

**One of my VIs is telling me that the Commander Shepard has already been here. He bought something, but left no review. His VI only logged it. Does that mean it's safe but not endorsed?**

Kaidan chuckled and looked over his shoulder at her. **It doesn't mean anything. He grew up on Alliance bases until he was 12, and then with his grandparents until he graduated University remotely. He never really had much chance to have a digital social life. He just lets his VI handle things like that for him, which means it basically doesn't.**

Tali asked, **Twelve? That's kind of young for a human, isn't it?**

**Yes it is.**

**# # #**

The Consort was facing away from the door, just looking down from an enormous overhead display as Shepard entered. "That is close enough, Commander. I've heard a great many things about you since your arrival on _our_ Citadel."

Having stepped down to the sunken floor, Shepard stopped. _Even the asari know who I am?_ The thought was at once ego-boosting and worrisome. "If three hours of secondhand reports have led you to conclude that I'm hostile, perhaps you'll give me a chance to explain myself."

"I apologize, Commander." The asari looked quickly over her shoulder at him; her face a deep indigo, motions graceful and studied, complexion as smooth as porcelain. "I make it my business to know when notable people come aboard the station. Many of them become clients."

"If you think I'm notable, then you must know something I don't. Though everyone I've spoken to so far seems to just think the world of you. What exactly do you do?"

The deep blue asari turned and swayed toward him. "That depends on your needs. I offer advice to some. Comfort to others."

"And there's something _I_ can do for _you_?"

"Possibly. But it is a private matter. Would you please have your bodyguard wait outside?"

Shepard looked over his shoulder; Richard was staring at the Consort, his mouth just slightly open.

"Corporal."

No response.

"Corporal Jenkins."

He seemed startled. "Sir?"

"Would you give us a few moments alone?"

"Sir!" He snapped to attention, rendered a crisp salute. They he looked quickly toward the Consort and added, "Good day, ma'am," and almost ran out of the room. If it was possible to say someone screamed under their breath, that was what Richard did: "She said my name..._she said my name!_"

The door closed behind him; Shepard was smiling as he turned back to face the Consort. "Sorry about that. He _really_ wanted to see you in person. I think you made his day. So what can I possibly do for you…ma'am?"

She paused to inhale thoughtfully. "I have a certain problem that could use your expertise." Her eyes were on the floor as she walked across the room in front of Shepard, and then walked back to stop in front of him. "I have a friend, Septimus, a retired turian general. I won't discuss the details, but…he wanted me to be more to him than I could be. We had a falling out, and now he spends his days in Chora's Den, drinking, and spreading lies about me. If you would speak to him as a fellow officer, I believe he will listen to you and let the matter be." As she spoke, she reached toward him, brushed the side of his face with a hand.

**Asari gesture of beseeching welcome; do not respond**, said his ARO.

"What happened between you?"

"I respect his privacy too much to go into the details. If he wishes to tell you what happened, that is his progative."

"I'm not sure what…uh…what do you want _me_ to do about it?"

"Appeal to his sense of honor. Remind him of his position as a General." She leaned up close, turned her head as if to caress his face with hers, but still kept her distance. "If you could convince him to stop spreading lies about me, I would be _very grateful_."

**Tiprozene (Pitocin-A) 12****μ****g/cm****3**, noted his ARO. **Pheromone analog to airborne Pitocin, but capable of crossing blood-brain barrier. Behavior tracking enabled for 48 hours. If you wish to disable, contact your superior (CPT. Anderson, D.)**

Shepard kept his expression neutral.

"Now I must ask you to take your leave. I have many clients waiting to see me." She turned away to the overhead holograph as if he had simply evaporated.

Shepard looked to his left and right, and then back at the Consort. He turned on his heel and exited the room.

Richard was waiting just outside the door. "Sir? What did she say?"

He replied with a tired expression. "If she'd wanted you to know…"

Richard deflated visibly.

"But considering what she didn't tell me, I don't know why she asked you to leave. She wants me to intercede with someone who's mad at her." He glanced around at the corridor, thought about how exclusive it must be, and what the location had to cost.

Then he looked at Jenkins again. After the fight in the bar, Jenkins had asked to "go home," a code phrase that the Alliance had arranged to allow people to change their minds about first-string combat. It kept the number of unhappy soldiers down, generally improved morale, and gave PTSD victims a way out before the memories had been processed by the hippocampus and made "permanent." It meant a soldier was self-discharging, with benefits prorated to their commitment length, less the investment in their training.

But Shepard had a plan for Jenkins, and it involved him not taking the 93(g) discharge. Maybe he could send him "home" without "sending him home." Captain Anderson could have him transferred to Eden Prime, and reassigned to one of the new units being assigned to replace the 212, maybe even with a new specialization.

"Aw, never mind. Maybe we'll take a crack at it. For now, let's go catch up with the rest of the team."

***** Glossary *****

aeroponics: Similar to hydroponics (wherein plants are grown in enriched chemical solutions,) aeroponics suspends them in structures with the roots exposed. The room in which they're grown has nutrients and water pumped into the air; no soil is required. Obtains even higher output efficiencies (both CapEx and OpEx) than hydroponics.

ARO: Augmented Reality Overlay

CapEx: Capital Expense - the cost to secure a resource. (Example: buying a car)

crapware: just what it sounds like

CCD: Computational CosmoDynamics: like CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics used in airframe design for atmospheric craft) but also accounting for relativistic spacetime curvature and mass relay stresses encountered by inter-atmospheric/interstellar vehicles; the acronym was chosen over that of Computation AstroDynamics because CAD still means "Computer-Aided Design")

Dassus: One of the asari republics, per cdn. wikia. com

Displa**iD**: A social networking app that identifies people to make social interaction easier Also facilitates exchanges of information and currency.

FMC: Fast Memory Cluster; similar to PIRADs, but at the "faster execution times" end of the spectrum.

HUD: Heads-Up Display

OEM: Original Equipment Manufacturer

OpEx: Operating Expense - ongoing cost to maintain and use a resource (Example: the maintenance and fuel costs of a car)

PVR: Polyphase Virtual Reality - high-bandwidth, immersive VR with two to five sensory feeds.

RTM: Realtime Text Messaging

shatash: asari means of exchanging and equalizing biotic energy. Most widely understood to be used under combat conditions to keep a whole unit at a common energy level, but can be used at any time when one asari finds it appropriate to help another who is tired or deeply depressed.

Updater: an action/adventure/sexploitation vid about an asari Spectre. Though popular among humans, it has propagated a number of misconceptions, much to the annoyance of asari...and Spectres...everywhere.

VI query: the 2180s version of Siri or Google Voice


	21. Chapter 21: The End of an Era

***** End of an Era *****

Sitting far enough from the ship seemed to help Saren calm down after the trip from Eden Prime, but the bone-chilling cold grated on him; it made his joints crunch when he moved. Turians were not well-adapted to extreme cold, and he had other reasons to dislike Noveria, but Benezia needed to put in another appearance at the lab.

The rachni queen had delivered about a hundred eggs, but they had not yet begun hatching. The cold would help with that if the information from Sovereign was good, but they needed more eggs and they need them faster. Benezia was confident that she could "persuade" the rachni to produce. That was perhaps the least unpleasant way to put it. He didn't like contemplating the asari merging with the insect-like thing, committing what could only be described as a mental rape in her efforts to get the queen to yield more eggs...and hopefully another queen.

There had been a discussion about possibly using afcRNA on an egg to change it in this way, but the breeding process itself was not yet understood well enough. If they had more eggs, they could experiment with them more readily, but at the moment, each specimen was relatively valuable.

This was not the only place he was doing research on rachni breeding, either; a dozen of the eggs had been sent with a small detachment of geth to another icy wasteland of a planet to determine if they could be hatched there.

He had gotten word – third-hand and inconveniently late – that the geth had lost some of their android platforms on that frozen world to what they assumed were scavengers. Saren had made it abundantly clear that there could be no compromise of this operation; no one could know the rachni were not extinct until they were positioned to strike.

Fortunately, even damaged and partially disassembled, the geth unit that had been captured still had functioning telemetry, and this allowed them to track the scavenger ship via telemetry from the unit's remains. Saren had sent an agent to intercept and kill them when they made for Ilium.

Now he had learned – again too late – that the agent had only managed to kill half of the scavenger crew before getting himself killed. That idiot Fist had also gone dark, and that human Shepard had almost certainly been responsible.

He sat grinding his incisors as he cancelled or used expensive WOTTA hacks to rescind the various fund transfers to Fist and other agents who had been killed, trying to think of what to do next. The Conduit was the highest priority, and the beacon's message had shown him what to look for – a planet the Protheans had called Ilos – but not where to find it.

Sovereign had made it clear that finding the Conduit was the next major task, but Saren still hadn't determined whether the sentient starship was unable or unwilling to provide more information or better direction.

Perhaps the all-powerful reapers were not as omniscient as he had thought.

Still, he had vastly more knowledge and resources than a human soldier…though he would have to take his own operation underground. While it had lasted, the prestige he carried as a Spectre had been unmatched. Only his reputation had bought him a few hours in which to liquidate or liberate his resources. Fortunately, his people were alerted in time and had taken their cells into anonymity, evacuated unsecured locations.

Though even if he managed to kill Shepard, he now had a deadline. The beacon had been found.

**# # #**

With Richard in tow, Shepard had found Tali and Kaidan engaged in a technical dialogue about drone VI control versus autonomy, and Ash browsing the virtual storefront of a human Maker. Across the hall, he noticed the hanar Maker he'd spoken with before, but had no way of knowing how to tell if he'd likewise been noticed.

Kaidan saw the two men approaching, but finished his sentence to Tali before addressing them. "…but sequesterage also offers better security. Oh, hey Commander. How'd it go?"

Shepard was nonchalant. "First she didn't have time to see us. Then she wanted to see us."

Richard had a huge, victorious grin on his face. "But we _did_ get to see her."

Ash finally turned away from the holographic catalog. "That's it? You just went _bloogling_?" She turned back to the holograph, shaking her head. "What will your mother say…?"

"She'll say, 'you didn't do anything unchaste, did you?' And I didn't."

"I suppose now you can put another notch on your binoculars." She shook her head and returned her attention to the holocatalog.

Shepard turned to Kaidan. "So what did you guys find?"

"Uh…" the biotic looked at Tali. "We didn't. I asked her if she used a drone, and she said she did, and we ended up talking about how short a leash she has on it."

"It's not a leash, I just constrained the expert systems to _combat only_ so it can run faster, fight better," she defended. "Until we can superimpose the state data directly into the projection itself, drones will remain complex toys. The range is too short, the attacks are too expensive for the power draw, and they're just not smart enough to be fully autonomous. Sure they draw fire, but if you want to do any serious damage, you'd be better off using a mech."

"Except that you can print drones in the field," Kaidan said toward the Commander. "So they become a consumable."

"And you have to carry all your consumables with you anyway, so you might as well bring in heavy weapons…" Tali said to Shepard.

Shepard held up a hand toward each to stop them, "Wait; give me the short version."

"That _is_ the short version," Ash interrupted. She looked over her shoulder at them. "These two were going at it worse than you and the LT."

"But that was about as far as we got before you got here," Kaidan said.

Shepard noticed the holocatalog Ash was browsing, and took a couple of steps toward it. "Well at least _you_ got to relax," he said. "Did you find anything?"

"I wish I could wear my hair longer, so I've been looking for a hair clip that I can wear and not have to rearrange to deploy my helmet. I can't be the only soldier who has this problem." She scrolled through a few of the available products. "Nothing I haven't seen before, though." She turned to him. "So is there something else we want to do while we're here?"

"Let me see if I can get an update from Captain Anderson." Shepard gestured for RTM. **Hey, skipper. Any luck?** He looked down the "hallway" to his right and saw Barla Von's shop; the purple-clad salarian guard was talking with a turian who turned and walked away.

**Anderson,D.: Udina knew where the turian Councillor's Chief of Staff has a regular meeting and ambushed her on the way out. He's showing her the evidence while we walk with her to her next meeting.**

**That sounds hopeful.**

****Anderson,D.: **Maybe. She's not saying much.**

Shepard was about to let the Captain alone when his next message came in:

****Anderson,D.: **Oh boy. Where are you?**

** In the Maker hall near Barla Von's.**

****Anderson,D.: **Better head for the tower. We're going directly. I'll meet you at the elevator.**

Shepard made eye contact with Ash. "Glad you suggested we come here." He raised his voice and spoke to the group, "Looks like the Captain and ambassador managed to get connected with the Council. Come on, we need to get up there."

He turned and jogged across the bridge; the four others followed.

**# # #**

Having handed the krogan off at In-Processing, checked in with the Captain, started the download of the Alliance blackbox data from the soldiers, and started his RPGVI on creating a report of the day's three major incidents, Garrus expected the tasks would take some time to complete.

So he was relaxing, and nearly oblivious to the world when PVRing his gameworld of Wild Empress. He had "cracked" his ARA to leave the visor off when doing so, which made it look like he was simply napping. When he felt the thump of a krogan finger, it was quite a surprise.

"Hey, are you awake?"

"Sorry, I thought I was going to be waiting for a while." Garrus tilted his head. "They let you go already?"

Wrex shrugged. "That teeny quarian isn't the only one protected by the Volition Accords. You shoot at me, I shoot back." The krogan shifted slightly. "Do you know where I can find that human, Shepard? If he's going to hunt down Saren, I want to find out if he'll take me along."

Garrus contracted his cranial foreplates. "You think you could get aboard an Alliance ship?"

Wrex held his arms out to either side, as if displaying himself. "Who would turn down a krogan battlemaster?"

"The Alliance. And every other serious military organization. They're not looking for hired guns any more than C-Sec is."

Wrex looked suddenly tired. "You turians have no sense of humor."

"A sense of humor?" Garrus sat up a little straighter. "Okay, how about this: _You're older than everyone else on the ship. Added together_."

"Yeah, okay. I guess that's kind of funny. For a turian."

"Look, I'm busy. If you want to wait here until the humans heads back to their ship, the Alliance dock they're using is Four-Two-Two on _that_ lift." He pointed out into the atrium. "There's no way they'll leave without going through there."

Wrex looked out at the elevator with one eye and at the turian with the other. "Hm. I'll eat that." He turned away, walked to a seat that faced the elevators, producing his PET as he sat down.

Garrus' ARA informed him that _I'll eat that_ was a krogan idiom for _accepting something as true and thanking the one who had offered it_. The turian looked at the back of the krogan for a few moments, and then stood up slowly.

The words of his old mentor drifted into memory, _You'll never get if you don't ask._

He touched a talon to his collar. "Captain Merickus? This is Vakarian. If you can spare me, I need the rest of the day off."

"Er…what? Garrus? Is this Garrus Vakarian?"

"Very funny. Yes, it's me."

"Uh...sure, Garrus. You're only about two years overdue for a day off. You just want the afternoon?"

"Well, I may need more, but I'll keep you posted. Something…personal has come up and I kind of need to handle it right now."

"Now? What is it? If you don't mind me prying."

"Frankly sir, I'm not entirely sure yet. Could be a big opportunity. But I'll know more in a few hours. I'll keep you informed, sir."

"Sure thing, Garrus. Hey, if it's anything I can help with, just ask."

"Will do. Thanks, Captain."

Looking thoughtfully around him at the C-Sec offices, he walked to the taxi stand and took a ride to his efficiency flat and began gathering as many of the things he couldn't stand to be without as would fit in his "sandwich" pack.

**# # #**

Godo's omnitool chinked at the arrival of a message.

** CDHouse: This is the SysNet VI for Chora's Den.**

** Owner-Operator Horace Tinkell has been declared provisionally dead. CS1602.71-73 ****Report/****Full Record/****Update/****Contest this Report**

** As the General Manager of this Establishment, you are now the Operator **_**locum tenens**_**. The Establishment is currently in Closed mode, no staff are present. There are currently GCr12454 of credit and GCr2778 petty cash available to resume operations.**

** Staff has been absent for 91 minutes.**

** 89% indicate they are available to return to work.**

** Facilities are in Fair to Good condition.**

** Do you wish to reactivate Establishment Chora's Den?**

The salarian frowned.

Then he smiled.

**Yes**, he replied. He switched comm modes and continued, **Message to staff: Please excuse the chaos, but it seems we are under new management. You may now please return to your duties. You will not be docked for the time away from work for today. Also, be sure to report any injuries or property damage to the SysNet VI within the next three days.**

**# # #**

When the elevator door lifted, Anderson was standing there.

"Come on. Udina's presenting the quarian's evidence to the Council," he turned and started walking. "He's already showed them his Vettered holo of the geth cores and boy, you should have seen him when the memory core actually showed Saren's name. Definitely an _I-told-you-so _type_._ I think he's still explaining _why_ we're confident in the data before he plays the audio."

Shepard looked over his shoulder at Tali and nodded. "Thanks again," he said quietly.

They started up a flight of broad, marble stairs.

Tali smiled. "Thank _you_…for the help, _and_ for taking me seriously."

They could hear the recording being played over the room's PA system as they approached the back of the platform. "Eden Prime was a major victory," said Saren's voice. "The beacon has brought us one step closer to finding the Conduit."

"And one step closer to the return of the reapers."

Everyone saw Udina lower his glowing omnitool and point across the chasm at the Council. "You wanted proof, there it is." His body language suggested that if he could have poked each Councillor in the eye just then, he would have.

Three-meter holographs hung in the air for all to see of the surviving core clusters, and the preliminary analysis of the other geth data. The super-dreadnought was also visible, both in LRAW and still imagery. Alliance data from Sargon ACI, and _Normandy_ showed the massive ship to be nearly opaque to their various sensor technologies. Dozens, possibly hundreds of still images of the geth invading Eden Prime scrolled by, captured from local security cameras, colonist omnitools, and semi-autonomous devices.

Councillor Sparatus was clearly annoyed; his fringe was flat against his skull. "This is an outrage, Ambassador. I offer my personal apologies. This evidence is irrefutable." His voice was amplified to be audible throughout the hall.

Tali whispered to Shepard, "Haven't they already heard this? I thought that's what the Human Ambassador was doing while we were at the clinic."

"Probably, but they need to make it part of the official record," Shepard nodded toward the corner where the turian had been represented during their last meeting, "Look, Saren's not here, not even holographically."

"I'll bet the turians are _piiii-issed_," Ash said. "Even I know who Saren Arterius is. This has got to be making them all look bad."

"Yeah," Kaidan nodded, "Though it seems like he's being railroaded if they're not even giving him a chance to answer before they do this. Why isn't the turian Councillor stopping them?"

"I assume the other Coucillors could override a single vote if that were the case," Shepard said, "But for all we know, the turian was the one who demanded Saren be shut down. Turians are really tough on dissidents...but especially traitors."

Udina had been eavesdropping as they approached; he turned and nodded. "Yes, well done, Miss nar Rayya. The evidence you recovered from that geth was so well established for purposes of Council law, that the decision was practically made _for them_." One side of his mouth curved up in what might have been a smile. "This will help humanity greatly; we are in your debt."

Tali's head turned toward Shepard. "Does this mean you're done with me?" She sounded surprised and unhappy.

"I doubt it," the Commander answered. "Whatever happened to Saren, we still have to stop the geth from invading any other colonies. And your experience with them, as well as what we've seen from you already, should prove highly valuable."

_And the Captain said to_, Shepard thought.

Tali nodded and relaxed, looking back up to the Council Platform where the turian Councillor had been reading intently from his data pillar.

To his considerable annoyance, Councillor Sparatus had been getting reports that Saren was not only ignoring the Council summons, but his known support structure had disappeared. The word back from his various intelligence staffers was that Saren had simply evaporated.

"It seems that in the time since our last meeting, he has been turning his operations dark," the turian was saying, "Vast accounts have been emptied, corporations have been tunneled and imploded." He played a talon across its control surface, and turned to the other Councillors. "On behalf of the Third Heirarchy of Palaven, former Spectre Agent Saren Arterius will be stripped of his status and all efforts must be made to bring him in to answer for his crimes." It was with visible effort that the turian stepped back and glared at his data pillar one last time.

He turned to the other Councillors again. "I move we disbar Spectre Arterius immediately, retroactive to our previous meeting…"

"Too little, too late," Anderson said quietly.

"Seconded," added Valern.

"Affirmed," said Tevos. The asari was frowning as she continued to look at Sparatus. "And…I recognize the other voice, the one speaking with Saren. Matriarch…_Benezia_." She sounded puzzled.

Valern looked up from his data pillar to the asari.

"Who?" Ash said.

Udina echoed the question forward. "Who's she?"

"Matriarchs are powerful asari who are entering the final developmental stage of their lives," Tevos explained. "Revered for their wisdom and experience, they serve as guides and mentors to my people. Matriarch Benezia is a powerful biotic and she will have many followers. If she truly is involved in this, she will make a formidable ally for Saren."

"The facecloaked person," Shepard realized.

"What?" Udina turned.

"C-Sec officer Garrus Vakarian had other evidence that pointed to Saren," Shepard explained. "We didn't get it from him after we rescued...um, Tali'Zorah nar Rayya. He took the krogan back to C-Sec HQ, and we didn't get his evidence. But he told us he had camera data implicating Saren and someone wearing a facecloaker." He pointed at the nearest holo of Eden Prime. "They were both there, and that must be who it is."

"I'm more interested in the reapers," Valern pointed toward the platform, "What do you know about them?"

"Only what was extracted from the geth's memory," Captain Anderson replied. "The reapers were an ancient race of machines that wiped out the Protheans. Then they vanished."

"That's…incredible," said Tevos. "What evidence do we have of this?"

No one seemed to have an answer.

"The geth believe the reapers are gods," Tali whispered to Anderson, "And they think Saren is the prophet for their return."

"That's the stupidest thing I ever heard," Ash grumbled. "They're _machines_. How can they _believe_? Or have prophets?"

"Because of what Saren said, we suspect the Conduit is the key to bringing them back," Anderson continued. "But we've not had enough time to fully analyze the data. We do know that Saren is searching for it, and that's why he attacked Eden Prime. The beacon may have given him a critical clue."

Valern worked his data pillar, then frowned at the other Councillors. "Do we even know what this _Conduit_ is?"

"Whatever it is, Saren thinks it can bring back the Reapers," Shepard said to Anderson. "That can't possibly be good. Remember what you realized about the geth building that dreadnought. That thing did a lot of damage to the colony on the way in; even by itself, it's a serious threat."

Sparatus shook his head. "Listen to what you're saying. Saren wants to bring back the machines that wiped out all life in the galaxy? That's insane…if not impossible!" He looked toward Tevos, who looked doubtfully back at him. "It _has_ to be," he insisted, "Where did the Reapers go? Why did they vanish? How come we've found no trace of their existence? If they were real, we'd have found _something_!"

Shepard set his omnitool to play back the first message _Normandy_ had picked up from Eden Prime, and it displayed it silently on one of the holotiles. "That _something_ may have just stomped Eden Prime, Councillor. I assume you have seen the video in the final message from the Alliance's 212. The camera they were using has a channel of ranged voxel data and information it has about the ship is general, but very exact. _Normandy_'s LIDAR confirms that it's enormous…bigger than any ship I'm aware of…except possibly _Destiny Ascension_. Wherever it came from, this is a serious threat, not just to humans, but to _everyone_."

He lowered his omnitool and continued, "You've officially stopped supporting Saren going forward, and that's clearly a good step. But Councillor, if I understand what you've just discovered, whatever resources he's already gathered as a Spectre are still his."

Anderson turned from Shepard to the Council, "He must have known for months…or even _years_ that it would come to this!"

"Whether Saren actually can make the reapers come back may be irrelevant," Udina sounded dismissive. "He may have nothing to do with them; they may be past misinterpretations of some kind of _force majeure_,' like pre-scientific people trying to explain an eclipse or a comet."

"But the geth and their super-dreadnoughts are a real threat," Shepard pressed the point. "With the past three centuries to themselves, you simply cannot afford to assume they have only one such warship; they could have dozens, even hundreds; I doubt they're recognizing the Treaty of Farixen. For all we know, the reapers may be a real threat, too."

"This is different." Tevos manipulated her omnitool. "You proved Saren betrayed the Council and used the geth to attack your colony. He's using them now to search for the Conduit, but we actually know _why_."

Valern shook his head nervously. "The reapers are obviously just a myth, Commander. A convenient lie to cover Saren's true purpose. A legend he is using to bend the geth to his will."

"Maybe. But without knowing his true purpose, you can't responsibly treat it as a non-threat. If it's an Atlantis, or a Noah's Ark, well…fine. But if it's a Vishnu-type asteroid collision, or an engineered hypernova, it could kill billions _instantly_. You need to know if it's as real as this super-dreadnought." He pointed at the holograph hanging between them. "At the moment, we don't know if Saren fabricated a whole reaper story to appeal to the geth, or if he's actually using information from another credible source; he's certainly talking about them as if they're real."

"Saren is now a rogue agent on the run for his life." Sparatus was still seething at the sense of betrayal he felt. Saren was a close, personal friend with a long history of _getting the job done no matter what_. "He no longer has the rights or resources of a Spectre; the Council has stripped him of his position."

"That is _not good enough!_" Udina leaned forward over the data pillar at the end of the platform, aimed an accusing finger at Sparatus, "You just told us he's used this time to gather incredible resources; money, ships, possibly people and equipment…and that's just what we know about. No! You know he's heading for the Traverse; send your fleet in!"

"A fleet cannot track down one turian," Valern shook his head.

"A Council fleet could secure the entire region," Udina insisted, "Keep the geth from attacking any more of our colonies!"

"Or it could trigger a war with the unaligned worlds of Terminus Systems." Sparatus put his hands behind his back and stood tall. "They may be wild out there, but if there's one thing they agree about, it's their illusion of independence. Nothing would unite them faster than the perception of a massive military presence from the Council. We won't be dragged into a galactic confrontation over a few dozen human colonies."

"Then send me," Shepard said, "I can find him. I might even be able to bring him back alive."

Tevos sounded impressed. "Commander Shepard is right. There is a way to stop Saren that doesn't require fleets or armies." She looked meaningfully at the turian.

Valern messaged, **If he finds and captures Saren, well and good. If Saren kills him, we'll have confirmed he's a threat and we'll have a much better idea of where he is.**

**I move we make him a Spectre**, the asari messaged to the other two Councillors.

Sparatus recoiled. "No! It's too soon. Humanity is not ready for the responsibilities that come with joining the Spectres."

"You don't have to send a fleet into the Traverse," Shepard said. "And the ambassador gets his human Spectre. Everybody's happy."

Valern messaged, **How else do you think you'll get that new ship out of the Alliance fleet, Councillor? I doubt either of us can afford to miss this opportunity. I second the motion.**

Udina raised an arm, pointed at Shepard, "It was a turian Spectre who betrayed this Council, and a _human_ who exposed him. We've earned this!"

Sparatus had managed to get control of his fringe, but his mandibles were still down as the asari and salarian turned to face him.

**It's up to you, Councillor**, Tevos messaged. She nodded soberly.

The turian slowly retracted his mandibles and nodded back. **Then I affirm.**

The three Council members touched their data pillars, confirming the decision, and starting a multicamera recording of what was about to transpire. Tevos spoke, "Commander Shepard."

He looked up toward the Council, feeling like he was suddenly in the spotlight.

"Step forward," the asari continued.

Next to the platform's data pillar, the edges of a panel on the floor illuminated, describing a rectangle where Shepard assumed he was being directed to stand. He turned for approval from his CO; the Captain was already looking at him with the hint of a smile playing around the edges of his mouth. He nodded toward the front of the platform; Shepard nodded in reply as he moved into the lit rectangle.

Stepping out Shepard's way, Udina found himself standing next to Anderson. A tone sounded, resonating gong-like through the chamber.

Kaidan looked up and noticed people in the gallery began to collect at the railings. Shepard glanced left and right quickly; there were more people up there than he'd realized.

Tevos spoke, "It is the decision of the Council that you be granted all the powers and privileges of the Special Tactics and Reconnaissance branch of the Citadel."

"Spectres are not trained," Valern continued, "but chosen. Individuals forged in the fires of service in battle. Those whose actions elevate them above the rank and file."

"Spectres are an ideal," Tevos said, "a symbol. The embodiment of courage, determination, and self-reliance. They are the right hand of the Council: Instruments of our will."

"Spectres bear a great burden," Sparatus said. "They are protectors of galactic peace; both our first and last line of defence. The safety of the galaxy is theirs to uphold."

"You are the first human Spectre, Commander," Tevos finished. "It is a great accomplishment for you and your entire species."

"Thank you, Councillor." He thought for almost half a second about what to say, opting for brevity. "I'm honored."

His ARO displayed, **Udina,D.: Ask them what your first mission is.**

"What's my first mission?"

Valern replied, "We're sending you into the Traverse after Saren. He's a fugitive from justice, so you are authorized to use any means necessary to apprehend or eliminate him."

"Do you have _any_ idea where to find him?"

"We will forward any relevant information to Ambassador Udina," Sparatus said.

"Apparently not," Ash sniped under her breath.

Tevos put her hands behind her back. "This emergency meeting of the Council is adjourned."

Suddenly aware of the fact that this was probably still being recorded, Shepard nodded solemnly, used the opportunity to check how close he was standing to the edge, and then turned to face the ambassador.

Anderson stepped toward him, hand extended. "Congratulations, Commander. I knew you'd do it."

"Thank you sir," Shepard replied as they shook hands. "I'm…glad to have done you proud."

Udina's mind spun with arrangements he would have to make, and how many of them would involve the current Captain of _Normandy_, the ship he had finally resigned himself to giving up to the cause. "We've got a lot of work to do, Shepard. You're going to need a ship, a crew, supplies…"

"You'll get access to special equipment and training now." Anderson seemed confidently excited. "You should go down to the C-Sec Academy, and speak to the Spectre Requisition Officer."

Udina barked, "Anderson, come with me. I'll need your help to set all this up!" He marched off quickly. Anderson turned to follow with another glance and nod toward Shepard.

With the platform a little emptier, Shepard found himself the center of attention. Kaidan stuck out his hand, as did Ash and Richard. Everyone spoke at once.

Richard was loudest, "Hey, congratulations, sir! This is _epic_!"

"Well done, Commander. I'd say you impressed everyone in the room." Kaidan seemed quietly pleased.

Tali's omnitool glowed as she captured stills and PVR.

Ash looked over her shoulder at the two men as they left. "Not even a 'thank you' from the ambassador? What a jerk."

"He's got a lot on his mind. Besides, until I bring in Saren, I haven't done anything. Come on." As they walked to the elevator, Shepard continued, "We have a lot to do ourselves, and I haven't checked in with the ship since we got to Eden Prime. But based on this meeting, we're probably going to head right back out…and in the next 48 to 72 hours, depending on how fast the dock crews can get us turned around." He shook his head. "Hard to say where we'll get our next assignment at this point."

He worked his omnitool as the door closed behind them, querying his workstation aboard _Normandy_. "Nothing from Trident, and the skipper hasn't issued any departure orders yet, so he's not getting anything from the other end. Hmm..." He looked up at the other Alliance soldiers and shrugged. "Since it seems we have no more immediate tasks, when we get to the Presidium, you're all at liberty, on a 24-hour cycle."

Richard turned away from the elevator's transparent exterior, flashed a grin at the Commander. "That's what _I'm_ talking about."

Kaidan asked, "We're not going back to Arcturus? I thought they were going to install a set of aft cannons, and some other stuff."

Shepard nodded. "Yeah, so did I. Skipper said Joker wasn't thrilled…at first. He argued that it would throw off the balance. Now that he's been talked into it, I wonder how hard it'll be to get him to think he was right all along?"

A grin slowly formed on Kaidan's face. "Isn't it neat how simply asking the question can make the answer obvious?"

***** Glossary *****

bloogling: a portmanteau of "blue" and "ogling," said of humans enjoying asari models

LIDAR: Laser radar, or "light radar," depending on your source.

LRAW: Long-Range Analysis Wireframe

Maker: someone who specializes in custom microfacturing and modifacturing

PET: Portable Extranet Terminal

PVR: Polyphase Virtual Reality - an immersive VR technology with between two and five channels of data

RPGVI: Report Program Generator Virtual Intelligence

Sargon AGI: Sargon Alliance Colonial Installation - the Alliance base on Eden Prime

Sandwich pack: A bodypack, or backpack with front and rear sections, providing better balance and greater capacity. The turian military's version of a footlocker.

Treaty of Farixen: a treaty to limit the number of dreadnoughts a species is allowed to build. See the Mass Effect wiki for more.

Vetter: an application for establishing the veracity or credibility of a thing by comparing it with municipal data, public records, running application integrity, etc. Necessary but not sufficient for legal decisions. Since the name of the app is "Vetter," something that has been approved with it is said to be "vettered.

voxel: the 3D analogue of a pixel. Using accelerometer data in conjunction with recorder timecodes allows interferometry to be performed; further derivation allows distance and relative size. The voxels required to describe an object can be reliably computed from just a few frames of video if matched with properly-calibrated omnitool mesh data.

WOTTA: Works Once, Then Throw Away


	22. Chapter 22: Religious Freedom

*** Religious Freedom ***

Shepard looked away from the multicolored nebula beyond the elevator's glass door, and his gaze fell on Tali again. "Oh…" he said. "I almost forgot. I need to get the paperwork started for you to join _Normandy_'s civvie complement." He gazed out the "windoor" in thought. "Hmm…you're the first, so I suppose that means you'll _be_ the civvie complement. Certainly on this ship…probably the first on a ship of this class." He put a single finger to his ear and added, "Victor Indigo, get the paperwork started for a civilian contractor: Tali'Zorah, who is standing here." He pointed at her. The VI generated an acknowledging tone in Shepard's auditory cortex.

Having learned to look with her eyes, Tali's mask easily hid any nervous glancing around. "Um…then…thank you. If that's appropriate."

"You may not be so grateful once he gets you quartered." Kaidan said, "We have a full set of sleep pods and lockers for a frigate, but the extras are all taken up with the CHA construction contractors until they sign off." He looked at the Commander with concern. "I don't think anyone ever assumed we'd have contractors aboard while we're deployed." He turned to Tali, "Normally, you'd be on a cruiser or a carrier of our Group. I don't know where we can berth _anyone_ else at this point. We're supposed to get our fleet assignment after the shakedown," he glanced at Shepard, "Though the Captain should already have some idea where we'll end up, don't you think?"

"Hard to say. The Saren situation might add a lot of complexity." Shepard looked at Tali. "Well, this stop may be unscheduled, but CHA can probably pull one or two of their people at this point. But until we figure something else out, I assume you'll be okay in a sleep pod. We'll just have to figure out when to cycle you in. We probably have enough extras out of cycle at any given time, but you might want to contact the Quartermaster, Rosamund Draven." His VI generated an icon and placed it on his omnitool, which Shepard pinched and handed to Tali. "Here's her info."

"Thanks." Tali's helmet turned as she glanced at Kaidan and Richard. "Pods only sleep one, right?"

Shepard couldn't help but smile. "Yeah."

"Well that would be just fine as far as I know. Honestly, on the flotilla, we sleep with our families. And that can be wherever. Some people even get good at sleeping while standing up, but I hear a VI helps with that. I've never tried it myself. But if you need me to, I can sleep almost anywhere."

The elevator finally settled to the Presidium Main Level, and the windoor slid into the floor. The group started along the short accessway to the Presidium.

"I've got it," Shepard turned to Kaidan. "The hangar. There was supposed to be a service mech for the LV, but they took it out. There should be room for a set of equipment lockers on the port side by the weapons bench." He glanced at Tali. "You can keep any armor and weapons in there."

"You may not even have to involve Engineering," Kaidan said, "Just have the MFO make 'em."

Shepard shook his head as they stopped in front of the Avina holograph. "Adams will have a _grand mal_ if we don't still involve him in anything that gets attached to the spaceframe, especially stuff that draws power and talks to Security."

Kaidan knew Shepard was joking; Greg Adams was about as easygoing an engineer as could be found, but the point was still valid. "Better put a call in, then."

"I'll bet we can get a _bunch_ of new places to keep stuff." He raised a finger to his ear again. "Victor Indigo, generate a work request for Greg Adams. Message as follows: Sorry to add to your woes, CHENG, but feel free to task the MFO if you're busy with serious stuff. I would like some lockers down in the hangar, next to the weapons bench. I was going to have the MFO make them, but can you figure out how many we can fit? I don't expect to need more than eight, but I remember you'd said the portside FLaGS wasn't staying balanced, and so wanted to get you involved as early in the process as possible. Let me know if you need anything else from me, and thanks. Sign my name and send."

The device chirped its acknowledgement.

He looked at Tali again. "How much equipment do you have? Or any personal effects?"

The quarian seemed to draw herself up to her full height. "_I carry my home with me_," she said.

Shepard looked at her oddly. "You have nothing? No service kit for weapons or suit, not even a backpack?"

"Only what I can carry or wear." Though she had made a reference to Fleet and Flotilla with Shalei's memorable line, _I carry my home with me,_ it seemed no one had understood. She sighed. "While on our Pilgrimages, we're encouraged to be as mobile and self-sufficient as possible. I think it helps you realize all the stuff you use, just living aboard a starship. It even changes how you think about 'home,' and what you _need_ versus what you _want_."

"Well, I'm out of here, Commander," Ash pointed away to their left. "I've got a drink waiting for me at that bar we were at, and I'm gonna go get it. Either of you want to come with?" She made brief eye contact with Kaidan and Richard.

"After today? You bet," said Kaidan. "I could use that drink. If that guy's still there."

Ash turned to Richard. "You're welcome to come," she shrugged. "Hate to leave you here all by yourself."

Richard scratched the side of his head. "Mmm…I dunno. I think I'll wander around here a bit. Might even ride that elevator again, and this time remember to get some PVR. My family would love to see it." He smiled amiably. "But thanks all the same, ma'am."

She grinned saucily. "Well like I said: _Have fun_, Corporal." She turned left and stepped away.

"We'll probably be there for a bit," Kaidan added as he followed her, "in case you want to catch up with us later."

"Thank you, sir; I'll keep that in mind."

Shepard pointed back at the elevator, spoke to Richard. "Council access is probably only available to people with appointments, but I suppose you'd get the same ride to the Gallery."

"You think the elevator has a VI that knows where you want to go, sir?"

"Probably. I didn't have to touch anything when we used the elevator last time. It probably compared Displa**iD** with the Council's Event Scheduler, saw we were supposed to be in a meeting with them. Took us there instead of the Gallery."

"Then I suppose I'll see you back at the ship later." Richard started back the way they had just come, nodding quickly toward Tali. "Take care, sir. Ma'am."

Tali waited until Richard had disappeared into the elevator again before speaking, "He seems nice."

Shepard agreed, "He is nice. A kid from the colonies on his second assignment. I hope I can convince him to stay."

"What?"

He shook his head, "Sorry, just thinking out loud." He turned and regarded the quarian. "Now, you said you've been ambushed, so you'll know why this is important. Is that armor, too?" He indicated her suit.

"Well, it functions like armor, but it's pretty basic. Most of my defences are tech. Shielding, distraction, hacking, and so on." She pointed to her shoulder, which looked new. "The material contains AF-3200; you probably can't tell this is where I got shot this morning."

Shepard shook his head as he started walking toward the taxi stand. "Not on _my_ ship you don't. Lucky for you, I just fell into some credits. Let's get you a set of armor."

"You have your own ship?" Tali had to run just a little to keep up with him; Shepard reduced his pace once he noticed.

"No, I'm just the XO…the Executive Officer. I say it's _my_ ship like I'd say Earth is _my_ planet. But I'm pretty proud to be serving aboard her. _Normandy_'s as new as they come; I think they're still peeling shrink-wrap off stuff. That mission we just had to Eden Prime was supposed to be the shakedown. We've got lots to do yet, but it looks like we may have to do it while underway…if they're going to send us right out again after Saren."

"I might be able to help with that," Tali said brightly, "with in-flight modifications and repairs…that's what we always have to do in the Flotilla. And I'm…well, I'm pretty good with tech, so…I might be able to help."

"That's sure nice of you to offer, but you should check with the Chief of Engineering before you do anything. I'll have to introduce you; his name is Greg Adams."

Tali pointed ahead and stopped suddenly. "Oh, look. You want to watch something funny?"

Shepard stopped, looked where the quarian was pointing. His VI focused mics so he could listen to the conversation they were approaching: A magenta-colored hanar, standing almost the full height allowed by its tentacles, towered over a turian C-Sec officer.

"That tall alien is a hanar," Tali explained. "They worship the Protheans. But it's talking to a turian. For a hanar, to show respect, you go higher than who you're talking to. For a jellyfish, it exposes the vulnerable underside. To a turian, you stand lower, or at least not higher.

"The more angry the turian gets, the higher the hanar will try to stand, which will annoy the turian more. If we wait long enough, the turian's brain will probably explode or something." She giggled.

Shepard turned to listen as Displa**iD** added names to the two aliens.

**Hanar Embassy Water Tender Thyofylia**. "This one does not understand the nature of the problem, Officer Bakkian."

**Citadel Security Officer Jimar Bakkian – On Duty**. "It's bah-KEE-an, and I've told you: You're not allowed to do this in here."

The hanar's voice resonated, "This one offers its most humble apologies at mangling the other's name. This one also believes it has the right to move freely through this area."

"Tiptoeing from one side of the plaza to the other and back _fifty times_ is not the same thing. You're trying to skirt the law about proselytizing, and you're creating a public disturbance. It's against Citadel regulations!"

"This one is unsure why the other would not wish word of the Enkindlers to be spread."

Shepard stepped forward to interrupt, "Officer?"

The turian bristled; his fringe twitched once as he pointed at the hanar. "Stay right there." Turning toward Shepard, he spoke through his teeth, "Yes, may I help you, human?"

"I overheard you talking about the hanar skirting Citadel laws. Is there a way I can help?"

"That hanar refuses to listen to reason," the turian snapped. "Why can't it act in an orderly and lawful manner?"

"Are there laws actually being broken here? Or is this a victimless crime?"

"Victimless–?!" The turian checked himself. "I suppose to you it might seem like it, but this could be used to set a precedent. Imagine a dozen street preachers crowding this plaza." He glared momentarily at the hanar, and made a grinding sound. "Blah blah Enkindlers, blah blah True Path, blah blah eternal bliss…_vek_!" He waved dismissively; Shepard's ARO put a callout on the turian's face and added, **Speaker is aware of listener in blind spot.**

Shepard waved a hand toward the expansive plaza. "Then everyone else would avoid the area, and the hanar and others would only be talking to each other."

The C-Sec officer pointed to his left. "This is the wards access for Sector Nine. That's why the jelly marches back and forth all day. It's looking for people to babble at."

"It's not forcing anyone to listen, though…right?"

"I am not unreasonable, _human_, and neither is the law. The hanar is free to spew its nonsense once it purchases an evangelical permit."

"So if the hanar gets a permit, it's allowed to preach? If I purchase the evangelical permit myself, would that take care of things?"

"As long as it stays in approved areas once it has the permit…yes. That would solve the issue for me. But registered evangelicals must still follow regulations. There are specific areas where preaching is legal, and _this is not one of them_. Failure to follow the regulations results in the forfeiture of the license."

"What's the purpose behind the evangelical permits?"

"Forcing religious evangelicals to register for a permit weeds out undesirables. It keeps the area safe. Have you ever heard a batarian Chrossagh get started? Do you even realize the vorcha have a religion, and that it involves ritually eating one of their number? The Citadel is too important to become a _battleground_ for a religious war."

"Why don't you just arrest the hanar?"

"I _could_ arrest the _jelly_, but my superior has requested that I find a solution that does not anger the hanar people. The hanar become…_vocal_…when they feel their religious beliefs are being suppressed."

Shepard's ARO displayed a message, **Tali'Zorah_nar_Rayya: It's true. They have a shriek that carries well underwater, but it's painful in the air. It sounds like a TMP seizing up.**

Shepard gestured to dismiss the text window. "If you'd like, I could talk to the hanar for you."

"I have argued with the stubborn jelly all afternoon. _You_…are certainly welcome to try." The C-Sec officer lit his omnitool gauntlet and turned away to interact with it.

Shepard looked at the hanar, which had begun to slide closer as if hoping to engage him in conversation. Its strangely-echoing voice seemed to come from behind him, "Do you desire to learn of the Enkindlers? Or has the honorable C-Sec officer enlisted assistance?"

"Both are more true than false," Shepard folded his arms. "But I have a question for you: Are you allowed to preach here in the Presidium?"

"The words this unworthy one speaks are merely observations of the truth, not _preaching_. The C-Sec officer requested that this one purchase an Evangelical Permit to spread the truth of the Enkindlers."

"So you don't have the permit. Which means you're breaking the law by preaching without a permit _right now_?"

"The C-Sec officer states that preaching in this place is forbidden, and preaching anywhere on the Citadel requires a permit. This one humbly submits that it is not preaching to state the truth of the Enkindlers any more than to state that _force equals mass times acceleration_; thus, no permit should be necessary, and stating the truth _here_ should be allowed."

"So buy the permit. You'll be able to preach…or _spread the truth of the Enkindlers_…almost anywhere else on the station. Is the permit more than you can afford?"

"Finances are only a partial limitation. This one does not believe one should pay in order to speak the truth." It paused, seeming reluctant to continue. "However, this one also does not possess the 150 credits necessary to purchase the permit."

"I knew it." Shepard shook his head. "You're not just evangelizing, you're panhandling."

"This one desires no charity. It only desires to spread the truth of the Enkindlers."

"Even if I purchased the evangelical permit for you, do you know what would happen?"

"Of course. This one would immediately lose the permit for speaking the truth here."

"And yet that doesn't stop you."

"The truth of the Enkindlers must be made known!"

Shepard paused, still looking for a place on the very alien alien where he could make eye contact. "Okay, I have a few minutes. Who or what are the Enkindlers? Are they just religious figures, like…seraphim, houris, or dryads?"

"Your people know them as the Protheans. They are the true creators of this one's people. The Enkindlers raised the hanar from ignorance into consciousness by granting this one's people the gift of speech."

"Oh." Shepard pursed his lips in thought. "So you've made history into mythology. Or you're calling your mythology history. Either way, you're still breaking the law, right? Is this how you really want to represent the Enkindlers?"

"The truth of the Enkindlers must be made known. They gave the hanar language, and gave the universe the mass relays. This one only wishes to spread the truth to any who will listen. There is no intent to cause trouble."

"If you're deliberately ignoring the effects of your actions, your _intent_ is irrelevant. So why do you insist on breaking the law?"

"This one can offer an example, if the other is willing to listen."

"Okay." Shepard folded his arms. He looked quickly over his shoulder at Tali, who seemed to be looking around at the Presidium.

"The humans have largely removed slavery from their domains," the hanar said. "Does the other find slavery offensive?"

Batarians sprang instantly to Shepard's mind. "You bet I do."

"Surely the other would want it known that _slavery is wrong_, especially in places where it still persists. Is this not _critically_ _important_?"

Shepard nodded. "Yeah, I could understand that…at least why you would break the law. But what is so important about the Protheans that only the hanar know?"

The hanar inched forward. "Does the other desire to learn the secrets of the Enkindlers?"

**Tali'Zorah_nar_Rayya: Nothing you'll care about. I have spent a lot of time with hanar because they offer dextro food if you listen to their Enkindler talks. Their religious views are complex, tedious, and pointless to anyone but another hanar.**

Shepard read the message and nodded to himself. "Uh…well, let me talk to the C-Sec officer. Perhaps I can explain the situation."

"This one would be most grateful for the assistance. Please let this one know if success is achieved."

The C-Sec officer had moved closer to the wards access; Shepard took a couple of steps toward him.

The turian looked up. "Any progress with that hanar?"

"Is there a way to let the hanar preach in the Presidium?"

The turian flinched visibly. "The Presidium is a place of culture and _respect_! It should not be filled with zealots shouting their idiocy!" The officer paused, steadied himself. "Why should the jellies get special treatment? Every _other _species understands and obeys the laws."

"It sounds like you think the best solution would be for the hanar to go away."

"Yes!" The turian took a deep breath, paused, and then added, "Yes. I don't care what you have to do. Take it home and put it in an aquarium for all I care. You can have your very own aquatic missionary. Just…get rid of the hanar."

Shepard turned to find the hanar again; the jellyfish had crept up behind him, unnoticed.

Its ethereal voice asked, "Has the C-Sec officer been assuaged?"

"The C-Sec officer is just doing his job. You're causing trouble."

"This one is too humble to suggest the C-Sec officer is personally biased."

The turian's fringe twitched again. With a muted snarl, he moved away, closer to the wards access.

_I suppose turnabout is fair play_, Shepard thought.

The hanar continued, "This one only wishes to spread the truth of the Enkindlers to any who will listen."

"Is this how the Enkindlers would want you to use the gift of consciousness?"

"The Enkindlers would wish for their message to be spread to all sentient species," the hanar pleaded.

"Even if that's true, they wouldn't want it done by breaking local laws. Why don't you start a PVR forum instead? Or even a blog? Point people to that and you'll narrow down your audience to people who are actually interested. And you won't have to keep looking over your shoulder for C-Sec."

"The truth of the Enkindlers is universal. This one humbly believes that the truth should not be suppressed. Exacting payment as a means of imposing limits upon the truth is an abrogation of this one's religious freedom."

Shepard opened his hands toward the hanar in a gesture of explanation. "_Religious freedom_ means you are free from having a religion forced upon you, either by a state, _or by another person_. For you to go up and talk to people about your religion – who have expressed no interest on their own – abrogates _their_ religious freedom."

There was an awkward pause.

The hanar's corpus turned to the left, seemed to consider the turian for a moment. "This one hears and yields to wisdom. Perhaps enthusiasm has clouded judgement in this matter. This one departs now, and will not intrude upon the Presidium again." As it struggled its way across the plaza toward the wards access, Shepard considered that it was no small feat for it to do so. It was working hard to bring its message to others. Part of him was momentarily disappointed at having extinguished such commitment. _Hopefully, he'll devote all that energy and time to helping others._

His reverie was broken as the C-Sec officer said, "I see the hanar has left. Thank you."

"Happy to help."

"Citadel Security will officially thank you for your assistance in this matter. Now, if you'll excuse me, I should report to my superiors."

Shepard's omnitool chirped. **Payment offered from Citadel Security: GCr1058**. He blinked at it in surprise.

Even though one of her suit VIs had already informed her of the transaction, Tali asked, "What is it?"

"I got an EP…or something like it." Shepard looked up from his omnitool. "It's an Encouragement Payment. Some municipalities use them in the Alliance too, but the amounts of money they throw around here are really surprising."

"It's a what?"

"Encouragement Payment. It's a positive social control instead of a negative one. Do something bad, and you have to pay a fine, or do community service. Do something helpful, and get a little tip from the government for doing it, like…" he waved his hands, momentarily unable to think of an example, "oh, I don't know…putting rubbish in a recycler, or taking down pirate advertising." He touched the green holographic key on his omnitool, accepting the payment. "I suppose the Alliance has made an arrangement with C-Sec, because it just popped right through all my p-net security. I'm surprised at how much it is, though."

Tali sighed. "I wish we still had an embassy. I could use that sort of thing."

_I wonder what happened? Must be a hell of a story…assuming she even knows it._ "Well, I can't fix that big of a problem today, but I can help _you,_" Shepard pointed at Tali, and then pointed ahead. "Let's go get you some armor."

As they walked, he continued, "If there's anything else you could really use, we can probably get it made aboard _Normandy_, but if there's something unusual, or something that humans simply would never think of, this might be the best time to try and find it."

Tali walked carefully, quietly trying to stay close without getting in his way or being an annoyance. And yet she was beside herself; this alien seemed to be treating her like a peer, had valued her work, and actually wanted to help her. _Probably best just to shut up for the moment_, she realized.

He stopped at the taxi stand. "I know there were a bunch of shops near that little burger joint. So unless you know someplace that sells a set of armor you've already got an eye on, let's start there."

"Um…no, I've never had a dedicated armor layer before. I never thought I'd need one. But I know a soldier who always told me it would be a good idea to have a set in local storage."

As they boarded the skycar, Tali struggled to process the day's events. She'd gone from being unconscious after an assassination attempt to consultant on a human ship. She'd been betrayed by the Shadow Broker, or his agent at least. She'd been to two embassies and several rides in Citadel taxis. The week before, she'd watched four people get killed. It would have been intoxicating if it weren't so terrifying.

As the taxi cruised through the Citadel's eternal evening, she realized she had things to do; she sent a message to Keenah that she'd been recruited to a position on a ship, and wished him safe travels. With a glance at the human in the seat next to her, she switched to Lewadar and clipped some notable segments to send home. She could hardly wait to tell her friends how her pilgrimage was going, but it would be another 12 days before her "message window" opened again.

'_So much lost, so much gained,'_ Tali thought. _It was just a line when Bellicus had said it. _But now that she had lived through the past week and thought it herself, it made her feel so…old. _But that's exactly what I feel today. _She sighed. _At least things are getting better now that_–

"What are you doing over there? You look like you're meditating."

Tali looked up. "Oh…nothing important. Sending some messages, remembering a line from my favorite series, picking out the exciting adventures to tell my friends about back on the flotilla."

"Just sitting there with your fingers touching?"

"I can control a lot of my suit with my internal HUD and vision tracking. It might look like BCI or BMI, but it isn't really. A full neural interface is kind of unusual…um…isn't it?"

"It's pretty unusual in _my_ experience. I know that people who are seriously injured will use them until their rebuild is complete. Though I know a couple of people who have the full haptic digit implant. Still, not knowing what sort of tech your suit uses, I thought you might have it."

"Not me," Tali said. "That sort of stuff would be expensive. The haptic implants require surgery, and they're just an add-on to a conventional physical experience…like gesturing, or my optic controls." She waved a hand at part of her faceplate, indicating the sensor array. "But direct thought control? They might have it in a lab somewhere, but I've never seen anyone using it. Or maybe I have and just didn't know it."

# # #

Udina scrolled his way through the Citadel's digital bureaucracy as he walked. "You won't be able to stay on as Captain if Shepard is a Spectre. Too much potential for conflicting interests."

Anderson's mood was too buoyant for him to care. He felt vindicated, both about Saren finally being hunted, and now about Shepard _getting made_. "Well, good for him. I have to admit I _did_ see this coming. Admiral Kodai was making noises about putting me in one of the new cruisers rolling out of Arcturus, but I think I could do more good aboard a carrier. Or a dreadnought."

"Jockeying for command of a _big boat_?" Udina glanced away from his omnitool just long enough to give Anderson a cynical look.

"Oh, quit it. You know better than that. There are too many of those positions already filled with wannabe power brokers and social climbers. I could have retired last year and a seat in Parliament if I wanted. Hell, I should FTL to the nearest dacha and leave no forwarding address." He glanced at Udina, sighed, and shook his head quickly. "But there's too much to do."

They continued in silence for a moment, climbed into a taxi. Udina raised a hand to one ear, spoke to his VI. "Mary Sue, message Admiral Bronson's staff. I've arranged with the Council for the handover of the _Normandy_ along with Shepard's administrative reassignment to the Council, but I still need to get approval from the Joint Chiefs for the actual transfer. We're going to try to keep this quiet; I don't want a lot of wailing and crying from Terra Firma, John Birch, _or anybody else_ about how we spent all this money on our best ship, and then gave it away. Notify me as soon as they have an answer."

He lowered his hand, looked at Anderson. "I assume you haven't gotten too well entrenched aboard the _Normandy_."

Anderson shook his head. "No. As I said, I could read the writing on the wall. This was all about getting a human Spectre. Hackett said as much when he asked me to command _Normandy_; he wasn't hiding anything. I just expected it to last a few weeks or months while Nihlus was putting him through his paces." He shrugged. "If they accepted him into the program, I didn't expect to stay. But at this point, I'm happy for both of you. I just…have some choices to make."

Udina remembered their first Council meeting after the Eden Prime massacre, and Saren's ever-hateful attitude. "Shepard's going to have that bird's hide for a doormat; I'm surprised you don't want to wipe your boots on it."

"I do. I'm just not as angry anymore."

"The hell you aren't. If you don't think so, you need to get in touch with your outer self."

The Captain chuckled; Udina had never been one for subtlety. "So do you, old boy."

The ambassador turned his head quickly. "Yes?" He raised a hand to an ear. "Speaking." He listened silently for a moment. "In fact I was aware of that expectation, but the decision has been changed." He listened again. "No. Remind him that there is more at stake here than a prestige ship added to his command. Please inform the Admiral that it is not my decision. Like him, I have stakeholders above me who see things differently. Yes. Hm, I don't know about that, but I'd suggest he call Trident if he wants the assignment changed." He paused, listening again. "I'm sorry, but no. Not even if he stamps his little footie or holds his breath. The Joint Chiefs have already approved, I'm just waiting for the official copy to get to the embassy. There is nothing I can do, and it would probably be more trouble than it's worth to change it at this point. Good, thank you. Yes, good day to you."

Captain Anderson had rendered his omnitool gauntlet and been inspecting event trees. "I notice you haven't asked about the crew reactions to the change, either."

"Why should I? Why should they?" Udina looked at the Captain just long enough to know he was moving the transfer process forward. "The Alliance isn't a republic. Besides, nothing really changes for them."

"If you think that, you've never been through it yourself. It's like a change in Prime Minister." He shrugged. "Though with a frigate, maybe a bit less so." His omnitool flashed a reminder callout at him; Anderson lifted a hand to his ear. "Pressley, this is Anderson. When you get today's shakedown report from CHA, shoot it back to them and find out how fast they can get cleared out. I want to switch this to Phase III, ideally before we leave the Citadel, so we can get as many contractors off the ship as possible." His ARO prompted him with the Contract Manager's name, though he knew it from repeated usage, "Anita said they were down to the point of handholding only for new tech, and they can just do that remotely going forward."

Udina looked away as Anderson's omnitool winked off. "You're still talking like you're the Captain."

"I _am_ the Captain. And I'm going to make this transfer as seamless as possible." He looked at Udina again. "But l like I said, you haven't asked how the crew will react. I assume because you don't know or care."

"The ship's too new, things are changing every day. Though I saw the launch on the news, and the turian press in particular were less than forgiving about the…incident…with your pilot. You had the chance to change him, but you didn't."

Anderson smiled to himself. _Ah, you old crank, if only you knew. I did change the pilot assignment, but only after Joker had stolen the ship and shown us what that oversized drive core could do in the hands of an expert_. "It's true he isn't the pilot I thought I was going to get, but honestly, I didn't think he'd have that much passion for the ship."

The ambassador shook his head. "Well, it is _just a ship_."

Anderson shook his head, then turned and looked out the window again, watching the skycar slow as it descended toward the embassy landing zone. "Always the politician, eh Donnel?"

The craft thumped as it touched down; the door clunk-hissed open and the ambassador stepped out. As the Captain lifted himself from the taxi, he saw the ambassador had rendered his omnitool gauntlet and was wiping and poking his way through the interface when he put a hand to his ear again. "Yes? Speaking. Ah. Admiral, I hadn't expected you to get back to me so quickly, I had just tasked my–" He stopped in mid-sentence. "Oh. You did? Well, that's unexpected, but timely. Thank you, that's good to know. Prepare yourself to get an earful from Admiral Mikhailovich, though. No, he had his Chief of Staff call me to protest. I tried to explain the value of the Alliance having a Spectre, but suggested he call you. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm, yes. Good, I'm glad to hear it. I'm glad we had this chance to talk, then. Yes, thank you, Admiral. And good day to you, too." His omnitool went dark.

"Good." He nodded at it and looked up at Anderson, "The Joint Chiefs have just approved the transfer of the _Normandy_ to the Council. We should get the Final Transfer Orders momentarily." He started walking toward the embassy. "They've added a clause that reverts ownership to the Alliance in the event of Shepard's death. At my recommendation, of course."

Anderson kept his expression static, but inwardly rolled his eyes. "Of course. But at what point do we tell him he's taking command of _Normandy_?"

"We have confirmation from the Joint Chiefs," Udina thought aloud, "I suppose by the time we get to the embassy, the official form should be there. But I don't want a word of this to get out until it's done."

"You're going to have a Command Transfer Ceremony, aren't you? It's his first command."

"This isn't a transfer within the Alliance, it's just being loaned to the Council with an expert crew. I don't see how we can do it without calling attention to it."

"It'll be handled on Alliance dock; if you insist, we can do it with no press. But a transfer still needs to take place. The crew has to know who their CO is, and it's not something you just video around the ship."

Udina exhaled noisily. "This will take time, and probably money, won't it?" The ambassador's omnitool vibrated, informing him that messages were starting to accumulate. "Time we don't have if Saren is to be stopped. You should know better than anyone that the Council revocation won't stop him. He's still out there causing trouble."

The Captain scowled. "I don't think you understand how these things need to be handled. There are traditions, things people expect at times of transition like this. I'm also sure Admiral Hackett will be unhappy if you deny it."

"Fine, whatever. You're the Council's Alliance Liaison for the Spectre project, can you handle this, too?"

"Of course. Anderson nodded as he turned away, and then smiled. That was what he had wanted to hear.

***** Glossary *****

AF-3200: Picoforge-based autoweaving fibrewire, a self-healing technology for EVA-rated suits

BCI: Brain-Computer Interface

BMI: Brain-Machine Interface

"Big boat": colloquialism for a carrier or dreadnought, command of which is a high-prestige position; it is from the commanders of these vessels that most of the flag officers are selected. Sometimes they become political figures or celebrities.

CHA: Cord-Hislop Aerospace

Chrossagh: one who instructs in the Pillars of Strength

CHENG: Chief of Engineering

COS: Chief of Staff

Event tree: an administrative planning tool similar to a Gantt chart, but which adds another dimension of contingency timelines

FLaGS: Forward Lateral Gravity Stabilizer

LV: landing vehicle

MFO: Master Fabrication Officer

p-net: personal network or devices; from bloodstream computing to wearables to carried VI-equipped devices

PVR: Polyphase Virtual Reality

TMP: turbomolecular pump, the kind used to create the vacuum in a vacuum chamber. The hanar shriek is on the order of 100dB at 1m, and oscillates between 10kHz and 15kHz.


	23. Chapter 23: Conrad Verner

A/N: Sorry to be so late. House sold, being demolished. Have under two weeks to get out and salvage anything...yes, over Christmas...and the house we had thought to buy is 25% overpriced for the market, so we have to pack as if moving out of state. It's as bad as it sounds, and it's going to be an awkward few weeks here; I will likely be late again with Chapter 24. But stay tuned; I'm overdue, not MIA.

*** Conrad Verner ***

A _Citadel Taxis_ skycar settled onto the landing zone near the upper markets; a human and a quarian stepped out and walked along the vendor stands.

Shepard looked briefly toward Tali as they walked. "You weren't really serious about that 'sleeping on a crate' thing, were you?"

"Well, only partly. I mean, where else would I sleep? It's not my ship, and you're not quarian. I don't know how your people...um…handle such things."

"Normally, contractors are berthed on a larger ship," Shepard explained. "But _Normandy_ is so new, we're just lousy with CHA contractors and engineers. This was a shakedown flight, or it was _supposed_ to be." He stopped, thinking about what the Captain must have known before they even left the shipyard.

They were only a few paces from a vendor's stall that his VI had identified as potentially having a relatively large selection of quarian armor. As his ARO displayed this on a callout, a volus to his left said, "Best place on this ward to buy upgrades. Prices are pretty good here."

Meanwhile, Shepard's ARO had polled Displa**iD** and added a callout to the volus merchant in the stall: Expat.

Expat's suit VI informed him he had just been identified, so he turned and extended his arms to the visitor in the traditional vol-clan welcome. "Hello, Earth-clan. No doubt you've just come back from the colonies. Will you be needing supplies?"

Shepard tapped his armor. "This is Alliance armor, not a colonial c-suit. What colonies are you talking about?"

"Oh. My mistake, Earth-clan. I assumed…" Looking quickly at the quarian and then back to the human, Expat interrupted himself, "Ah, it doesn't matter. Feros? Noveria? If you haven't heard of them, you will soon. But it doesn't matter where you hail from. My goods are available to all."

While the volus was speaking, Shepard's ARO had scrolled up a list of notifications:

**Civilian contractor approved.**  
**Billeting and equipment TBD, MFO Gomez notified**  
**Logistics confirms update, consumables updated for +1 Crew**

He gestured at the interface, acknowledging the approval, but realizing he would need to be sure they had dextro rations. To keep the volus talking while he texted the modification, Shepard asked, "Okay, why would I know about Feros?"

"It's an old Prothean world. Their buildings still litter the surface. The humans aren't the first to colonize it, but they _are_ the most recent. Hmm...I just realized I haven't heard from my contact on that planet for some time. Ah, well. I'm sure he's fine."

"And what's so unusual about Noveria?"

"The corporate capital of the Attican Traverse. Very cold. Very snowy. I don't get too many clients from there. They have all their own…_private_ suppliers."

To Shepard's surprise, the reply came back immediately:** : Yes, sir. Dextro ration feedstock added to resupply.**

"Hm. I'll keep that in mind if I ever get there. But for now, I'd like to see some _quarian_ armor."

Tali turned to the volus as if expecting a refusal, or profession that he had none.

Instead, he put his hands behind his back. "Ah. Unfortunately, that will mean adding to the suit's weight unless you get an integrated set."

**Gesture implies genuine apology, **Shepard's ARO informed him.

Expat continued, "That sort of armor couture will probably be available only through a Maker. You may need to check at the Emporium on the Presidium."

The volus shopper had waddled over to the stall. "Have you _been_ to the Emporium up on the Presidium? It's really expensive." He turned to Shepard, "I suggest you try the markets down the stairs one level if you can't find what you're looking for."

As a way of getting his attention, Tali stepped closer to Shepard without touching him. "You don't need to do that. If you can get armor my size, I can integrate it myself while we're underway."

"An excellent idea," added the volus, "but technically challenging."

"I can do it," Tali said confidently.

Shepard leaned forward on the counter. "Okay, show me what you've got."

"Most excellent. I am sure you will find something pleasing."

A kiosk rose from the countertop, with five sets of quarian armor scrolling across its holographic face. Shepard touched one to stop the scrolling, rotated the kiosk so Tali could see and reach it easily. "Okay, this is what's available here. You've got a nine thousand credit budget. What sort of gear do you want?"

Tali interacted with the kiosk holograph, comparing prices, capabilities, and specifications. Her mind reeled. This alien was about to gift her a 9000 credit suit of armor, just _because_. "Well, the Survivor looks like the best performer. It's also several times what I have to spend."

"Oh…" rasped the volus, "I'm sorry. It defaults to the highest-priced options. If you touch the price, it will display all the available levels."

Tali touched the holo, studied it for a moment, and swiped through the choices. One of her VIs tagged the kiosk with a callout and offered its analysis and recommendation. Tali pointed. "Looks like the Survivor doesn't offer as good tech and biotics protection, but I think I can mod it to perform a little better. What I can't do is up the protection. For the money, the Survivor still looks best." She looked at the volus, pointed at the kiosk display. "Coloration is just a marketing thing, isn't it?"

[_rasp_] "That's right. Devlon brand their armor as any smart company would. [_rasp_] But you can upgrade to customize the color scheme. [_rasp_] And it sounds like you want to modify the armor yourself. [_rasp_] Be careful your modifications don't void the warranty."

Tali cocked her head. "You're joking, right? No one that it fails to protect will live to file a claim."

"I still advise against it, young one. [_rasp_] Better ten times hurt than one time killed. [_rasp_] But let me make another suggestion that may make it unnecessary." The volus inhaled very noisily, then continued, "If you buy or upgrade a weapon, I'll throw in [_rasp_] an armor upgrade of one class."

Shepard asked Tali, "You're carrying a shotgun and a pistol, aren't you?"

She produced them instantly, held them up proudly. "A Storm-V and a Stiletto-IV. Oh wait…" She regarded the shotgun as if seeing it for the first time, "I traded the Storm for a Scimitar-III."

"Not much of a shotgun user, myself," Shepard admitted, "but that_ sounds_ like an upgrade."

"Yes it is," Tali agreed, "the Scimitar is a better shotgun, and Elkoss generally has better design."

Shepard addressed Expat, "If I upgrade two weapons, will you put two upgrades on the armor?"

The volus gestured in the air before him, manipulating an interface only he could see. He looked from the weapons to the kiosk, and then to Tali. "I'm glad to hear you're already a satisfied customer, [_rasp_] and I'd like to encourage you to keep using Elkoss Combine's fine equipment, so…[_gulp, rasp_] we have a deal, Earth-clan." He reached up to take the weapons, placed them into a compartment in the wall behind him and closed the door. "My staff will require a few minutes to perform the upgrades," he wheezed. "You are welcome to continue shopping, or if you're hungry, [_gasp_] there is an Earth-clan feeding store nearby."

Shepard's ARO asked him to approve the three purchases. As he did, he asked, "Is there a place that sells quarian food?"

Tali flinched; she nearly jumped. "No," she said. "Nobody sells quarian food except other quarians. Only aboard the flotilla. Most people think quarians and turians eat the same food, but we don't. At least not unless we have to. Turians are predators, they're carnivorous. But their food has the same chirality, and this causes the confusion. If I eat your food, it has about as much nutrition as…_plastic_."

"That's true," Expat nodded as he looked up from his sales interface. "Oh! Earth-clan, [_rasp_] you are…a Spectre?"

"I am. I didn't realize how fast that news would travel."

"If it were _news_ yet, I would know it," the volus inhaled as he waved to his left at a display on his HUD. "But your e-sig makes it clear." As he inhaled, he turned toward Tali and then back. "Did you not know, Earth-clan?"

Shepard lit his omnitool, dug into a menu and checked his signature data. The ERC waveforms matched, but were subtly different than before. He squinted at the ARO's information, brushed it aside, and checked the actual signature. "Oh, I knew, all right. But you saw it in my ID, right?"

Tali seemed doubtful. "Yes, well...anyone can _claim_ to be a Spectre, but if you really are, your e-sig will have the Citadel authenticator taglet," she explained. "Not everyone knows to look for it. But if it's there, open it and look for the designation."

Shepard knew how to validate his own e-sig, but had not looked at it in weeks, certainly not since leaving the Council Chambers.

**Seal of the Citadel Council**, read the expanded electronic signature. The motion graphic cycled through its animated loop: **Spectre Agent 11259375. Active. Certification Validated, Citadel Council. Approved. Seal of the Citadel Council…**

He shook his head. "Looks like it's official," he said.

Expat turned sideways and extended a stubby arm. "Congratulations, Earth-clan, and [_rasp_] thank you for choosing Expat's for your first purchases as a Spectre."

Chuckling to himself, and slightly surprised, Shepard reached down and shook the three-fingered hand. "Thank you…uh…and you're welcome."

The volus seemed barely able to contain himself; Shepard noticed a brief tremble in the exosuited merchant. "However, you may still wish to visit the requisitions Officer at the C-Sec Academy. [_rasp_] They will have exotic equipment that I simply do not have access to."

Shepard recalled Captain Anderson saying something like that right after their last meeting with the Council. "What's the best way to get there?"

The volus quivered subtly and pointed toward the taxi stand. "Public Transit will take you right there. [_rasp_] I would be very honored if you would bring any [_gasp_] _recovered equipment_ to me. [_rasp_] I can get you excellent finder's fees and salvage rates."

"Hm…I'll keep that in mind." Shepard waved a thumb over his shoulder and looked at Tali. "You want to go shopping while he's baking?"

Looking quickly from Shepard to the volus and back, Tali seemed briefly at a loss. "Um…sure!"

Before they could turn away for the taxi, they heard a gasp. "It's you!"

Shepard's ARO put a callout on someone out of his field of view to the right; as he turned his head, the highlight label slid into view: **Conrad Verner**.

The lanky, blond-haired man was just approaching from the stairs. "I _thought_ it was you when you ran by here before with your weapons out. You and that C-Sec officer and some of your soldiers." He turned and pointed behind himself to the top of the stairs. "I figured you had to come back, so I waited _right there_…and you came back!"

Turning to face Shepard again, eyes wide, he continued, "You're Commander Shepard, the hero of Eden Prime," he took a hesitating step closer. "I am so honored to meet you!" He seemed at a loss to know what to do, bowed his head.

Shepard extended a hand, which was instantly shaken. "Nice to meet you. And you are…?"

"My name is Conrad. Conrad Verner." He grinned almost maniacally, raising a clenched fist. "On Darhurst, they say you killed over _a hundred geth_ on Eden Prime!"

"Geth are synthetic," Tali interrupted, "They're not alive _to kill_."

Shepard shook his head. "I spent most of my time trying to stay alive and help the colonists. Darhurst tends to exaggerate to get more viewers."

"Hey, I know you're probably busy, but do you have time for a quick autograph?" He offered a datapad.

Shepard took the pad, waited for his VI to approve it, and then signed in the available rectangle. "Anything for a fan." He handed the datapad back, "Here."

"Thanks, I really appreciate it. My wife is going to be so impressed!" Holding the pad in both hands, he grinned at it, and then looked up at the Commander. "I'll let you get back to work." He started to turn away, then stopped suddenly and added, "But next time you're on Earth, I'd love to buy you a drink." He looked at the datapad again and started down the stairs. "Thanks again!"

Shepard watched the other man dash off. He shook his head, smiling to himself. "You never know what's around the next corner."

As they started for to the taxi stand again, Shepard said over his shoulder, "Thanks, mister Expat."

"You are most welcome, Earth-clan!"

Tali watched…and kept her thoughts to herself.

# # #

Waiting until they were safely sealed in the relative privacy of a taxi, Tali twiddled her fingers for a moment before she asked, "Um…did you understand why that vendor was sending you to C-Sec?"

Shepard turned toward the quarian as the skycar cruised the narrow corridor; neon Cherenkov shapes flashed past the window beyond. He speculated, "Trying to make nice with the new Spectre?"

Tali shrugged, "Yes, that's true, but really he's trying to get the latest tech, weapons, and armor. Spectre agents have access to things that nobody else does. He's hoping you'll sell him yours as you wear it out. Or as you get it. But he had to be kind of indirect about it."

"Hm." Shepard was going to say that it was unlikely that would happen, but his ARO displayed,

**D. Anderson: When you have a few minutes, can you come to the embassy? I've been talking with the ambassador and the Joint Chiefs, and we've got some planning to do.**

Touching his left thumb to forefinger, Shepard subvocalized, _Will an hour be okay, sir?_

****D. Anderson**: Sure, that'll be fine. You find your way to the Spectre Office?**

_Not yet, sir. I'm on my way there with the quarian._

There was no reply as the taxi descended next to a column of windows that looked like an office building; an elevator ascended past them. The taxi settled to the ground with a thump; Shepard and Tali were exiting the skycar when Anderson's reply came in:

****D. Anderson**: You'll probably need a couple of hours at the Spectre Office. This isn't just a "pick up your gun and badge" thing. But since the closest Spectre Office is at the Academy, you might want to walk the quarian aboard _Normandy_ and then return to visit the Spectre Office. There will be some business to handle, and it will take some time. Tell Draven to accommodate the quarian like the contractors, and get her set up while you're away. I want as many of those CHA contractors off the ship as possible. Then come see me at the embassy.**

Shepard touched his left index finger to thumb, illuminating his omnitool gauntlet as a social cue before realizing the alien might not quite understand. "Uh…right. Change of plans," he said.

Tali had been gazing around the C-Sec Academy atrium, but turned to look at him.

"Captain Anderson says I should get you aboard first; it looks like the rest of my day just got eaten up with other stuff." He pointed at the vertical glass tube at the center of the atrium. "Fortunately, the elevator is right here."

"What about my weapons and armor?"

"Skipper said to get you aboard, berthed, recognized by security, and so on." He shrugged. "Like I said, frigates don't usually have contractors; he's probably expecting it to take longer than usual." He started toward the elevator. "On the other hand, it might be a little easier right now, because we're still trying to figure the ship out. People haven't gotten stuck in ways of doing things. But if necessary, I'll pick up your stuff before I come back aboard." The elevator door hummed open and they stepped inside.

"What we don't have is a pay grade for you." Shepard gestured for RTM, subvocalizing, _Victor Indigo, the quarian isn't a regular contractor. Find out what Alliance procedures apply, and how much we need to pay her._

Tali watched as Shepard waved his omnitool past the sensor; its display showed **Dock 42-2**. "I appreciate it. I hope it's not going to be too much trouble. I'm really looking forward to this; thank you."

The elevator began its ascent.

"The Galleybot says we can accommodate you from one of the printers, but it'll have to be clearly marked," Shepard read from his ARO as it was updated. "Do your people normally use food printers?"

Tali's helmet tilted quizzically. "Are you kidding? We've raised it to an art form. It's almost all anyone has access to. It's not like we can just go to the zoo and get more animals, not even to breed. Even if the geth haven't wiped out every organic on Rannoch, we can't even keep any animals we could rescue." Tali seemed to catch herself, made a cutting gesture with one hand. "I'm sorry, it's a sensitive subject, for quarians generally, and me particularly. Yes, we mostly use food printers, and if you want, I can get you everything we've learned about increasing efficiency and optimizing for medical personalization."

Shepard looked away from her to study his ARO briefly. "I'm probably not the one who'll need that, but I'm glad you have it available."

"I have a question for you," Tali said. "Will I be have free run of the ship, or will I be confined to a place if we're not…um," she waved her hands vaguely, "you know, actually hunting Saren and the geth?"

"Obviously there are parts of the ship that are very sensitive or dangerous, and you'll be kept out of those by security measures already in place. When we're engaged in ship-to-ship combat, you will probably be safest in the Medical Bay. At least until we can find another place, or if another place is even considered necessary. But you'll have _relatively_ free run of the ship." He looked down through the transparent bottom of the lift. "It'd be a pretty damning statement about how the Alliance treats its contractors if we always put you back in a toolbox after we were done using you."

"It would," Tali said quietly. She fidgeted, "Sorry, I hadn't meant it like that. I'm just…I'm very excited about learning everything I can, and I didn't know…um…how restricted I might be."

The elevator hummed quietly as it rose toward the dock.

"So are there only _people_ aboard your fleet? No pets or food animals? I thought it was mostly civilians."

"It _is_ mostly civilians," she agreed, "but collectively we call it the Flotilla, and different ships have different complements. Most of the military force we have operates like civilian police, and soldiers are scattered throughout the fleet. So there are soldiers on every ship. But there are a few warships, mostly on the periphery, to keep predators and pirates away. They fought more in the early days after the Geth Uprising. These days, practically all of them have their families living aboard them…there are just a lot fewer of them…relatively speaking. Soldiers often marry soldiers, too. And the Admirals usually cooperate to try to keep families together.

"The cruisers and other warships are also equipped with the most state-of the art equipment, because they often have to repair civilian ships that have troubles and are falling out of formation. They have the best sensors so they can spot potential hostiles a long way out. There's a lot of prestige being in one of the military ships; it almost always means you're really good at what you're doing."

The elevator had stopped, and the doors slid away. As they walked out, Tali continued, "There are a few types of animals that we keep on a few of the liveships, but they are relatively space- and resource-intensive. We have enough flora and fauna on ice to colonize a planet, but we've never been able to find a planet available to colonize."

Shepard noticed he was frowning, and that his frown had been deepening. Captain Anderson must have known some of this, but it sounded like a wrong that had been committed so long ago that no one felt like they could do anything about it. In a galaxy of hundreds of billions of stars, how hard could it be to pick out a world for them to try to live on? Something was clearly wrong with this situation.

The quarian stopped suddenly, ran to the rail, leaned as far over it as possible; it looked like she was about to fall over it. "Keelah, is that your ship? It's…it's _beautiful_! I've never seen anything like it! It hardly looks like an Earth ship…or anything else I've ever seen!" She looked over her shoulder at him, pointed at _Normandy_'s prow, "That, right there. Is _that_ your ship?"

He almost laughed at her reaction. "Yes it is. I think _Normandy_ is the Alliance's newest ship. So new that we haven't even had a proper mission yet; we just got back from our shakedown."

Tali's VIs and sensors took in as much as they could; her HUD filled with data callouts, identifying systems, capacities, pulling data from her NetBite and correlating it with what she could see. She switched the display to clear the data and studied the ship hanging from docking clamps.

_This is the future_, she thought. _I'm looking at tomorrow's warship._

She looked back at the human again, just standing there smiling at her. "When can we go aboard?"

He pointed at the docking arm. "Right now."

Tali started toward the gangway; she practically ran there.

"Wait wait wait," Shepard jogged to catch up. "Security will want to see me there, and I'll identify you." He trotted past the quarian, who had stopped at the end of the covered gangway, and strode to its end. Looking over his shoulder, he saw the quarian still waiting at the platform. He waved her over.

"Here's where it'll get interesting. I've never done a Contractor Debut before. Normally, the Captain would have approved the request, I'd handle the forms, we'd wait a few days, and then Trident would get back to us. The Warrant Officer would greet you at the platform where we were to meet you, and the VIs would already be done exchanging information about you.

"But that would only apply if we were on a bigger ship; a cruiser or battleship, which I've served on, or a dreadnought or carrier, which I haven't. They have the extra capacity for contractors; we don't. But a frigate is normally assigned to picket a larger ship, and if we needed a contractor, like I said before, you'd normally be berthed _on that larger ship_; we'd dock to bring you aboard when we needed you. Or else we'd use a P-3 Mullins or some other ship's boat."

The boatswain interrupted, "Executive Officer Shepard is aboard. OD Pressley stands relieved of the deck."

Shepard looked at Tali, pointed at the door with his nearer hand. "This should be interesting."

The airlock's inner door grumbled aside.

Warrant Officer Talitha Draven was standing just inside the door, saluting. "Welcome aboard, sir. Dock Command said you were on your way up with a new contractor."

Shepard returned the salute. "I appreciate you being proactive about this, Draven. But I suspect your day is just beginning. I don't think the Alliance has ever had a _quarian_ contractor."

Tali managed a hesitant little wave at the human female. "Hi…"

The smallish Asian-featured woman smiled confidently. "Actually sir, we've really got a leg up on this. It's unusual, but she isn't the first, so I was able to get a lot of help from Operations." She held up her arm, lighting her omnitool. Shepard recognized the PDT and nodded approvingly.

"Everything you always wanted to know about having a quarian contractor, right here," Draven gestured forward with her thumb, "We also have a ship that was co-developed with the turian government, and our equipment was already designed for joint operations. When Spectre Nihlus was aboard, we were able to support him without skipping a beat; everything from galley to medical converts on demand." She beamed confidently at him. "With him gone now, I'm kind of glad to have the opportunity to find out how well we're equipped."

"Outstanding, Draven." Shepard indicated the Warrant Officer with a wave of his hand as he looked to his right at Tali. "In that case, I'll leave you in the competent hands of our ILO while I head back to the station. If either of you need anything, RTM me."

WO-2 Draven was equipped with a half-headband HUD; its left-eye holograph informed her of how to formally greet a quarian visiting from another ship. She extended both hands, palms up, and bowed slightly. "On behalf of Captain David Anderson, I welcome you aboard SSV _Normandy_, Tali'Zorah nar Rayya. I'm at your service."

Tali replied by bowing, and brushing her hands, palms up, across the human's. "Compliments of Orvik'Rosech, hod Rayya, [her Captain]. I am at _your_ service."

The human stood straight and extended her hand, offering a human handshake. "I'm Warrant Officer Talitha Draven, and I'll be your shadow for a few days while you're getting used to life aboard _Normandy_." She smiled as Tali exchanged this greeting as well. "Are you hungry? We can start by getting your galley profile set up."

As she stepped out of the airlock, Tali seemed at a loss for words. "Um…that would be good." She glanced quickly at Shepard and then back. "Oh…I was just telling Commander Shepard that I have information for exactly that: Increasing efficiency and optimizing for medical personalization. And if you already have dextro-compatible food printers, I can help you configure it for duplex operation in just a few minutes..."

Shepard made eye contact with Draven as the woman began to guide the quarian down the accessway, and nodded with satisfaction as the inner airlock door grumbled shut.

# # #

He returned to the elevator, descended to the C-Sec Academy atrium, and followed his ARO directions down two flights of stairs to the Spectre Office.

Folding his hands together, the turian at a desk looked up; a collection of holographic displays around him collapsed as Shepard approached, leaving only the control console lit. "Commander...Shepard. Here with the Alliance, first time on the Citadel. Is that about right?"

"Yes it is. My Captain said I should come down and check with you about special equipment and supplies."

"Ah. We do in fact stock special equipment, but its use is generally restricted." He leaned forward, his hands still folded in a gesture that looked quite casual.

"Restricted to…?"

"I'm afraid that information is also controlled. Though I do have an array of equipment you might not find anywhere else. Would you care to see it?"

"I suppose that would be a good start." Shepard illuminated his omnitool, and selected his e-sig, displayed its contents. "But you might want to have a look at this first." He pinched the e-sig token, extended it to the turian official.

The turian hadn't taken his eyes off the omnitool display. He put his hands back down on the desk, leaned forward with his fringe contracted. "Spirits, that's either the best forgery I've ever seen, or…_you're the human Spectre_." He shook his head in disbelief. "Sorry, I'd heard about that, I just didn't believe–" He sat back in his chair suddenly, made a noise like metal clanking on a rock. "My apologies, Agent." He stood, rendered an Alliance salute. "Welcome to the Spectres. I'm C-Sec Liaison Tello Dasinian."

"Thank you." Shepard returned the salute crisply as his ARO displayed the turian's rank in his native language. "It all came as something of a surprise to me, Latarn. No apology is required."

Dasinian sat back down, gripping a biometric reader. "It's unusual for Spectres to come here to get equipped."

"I assume my Captain had a reason for doing so, but he didn't share it with me. It's possible this is the only one he knew."

The turian looked up at him again. The way he moved suggested impatience, and Shepard's ARO informed him of this. "Agent, you are a Spectre. You don't have a Captain. You report to the Council directly."

Shepard paused, then shook his head. "Well, the Captain of my ship, David Anderson, told me to come here. Is there someplace else I should be instead?"

"David Anderson?" Dasinian lit his omnitool, worked it quickly. "Oh, the human candidate from before. He's your Captain? Or, I mean…he _was_?"

"He still is," Shepard defended, "at least as far as I know. Is there someplace else I should be?"

"No, this is fine, it's just unusual. Your David Anderson probably sent you here because this is where Spectre candidates usually equip for their evaluations, so it may be the only one he knew of…twenty years ago. Once you've been accepted into the program, the Central Spectre office is where you would go for a proper outfitting. I can't do the full medical workup, but I can arm you." He worked the controls at his console, opening and closing some of the secondary holographics as he did. "It looks like your government has set up an expense account and CAO listing through AGAS. Do you know this AGAS?"

"Sure do," Shepard said. "Alliance General Accounting Service. Does that tell you if the account is associated with the ship or with me?"

Dasinian looked down at the holographic display. "_Normandy_?"

Shepard nodded. "That's my ship. Okay, I have my mission, does that tell you if I have a budget?"

The turian looked up quizzically. "You're a _Spectre_, Agent. To accomplish your mission, the resources of the Council are _at your disposal_." He leaned back in his chair, manipulating the biometric reader. The door behind Shepard hissed closed. "Here." The turian looked to his left as wall panels parted to reveal an array of weapons, armor icons, biotic amps, and omnitools.

He looked down at his own omnitool and thought, _Looks like it's time for another upgrade_. He waved an arm at the impressive collection. "Are you familiar enough with all this to advise?"

"Technically I have C-Sec rank, but primarily I've been part of the Spectre Office for three years. I've served in Fleet Special Operations where I earned my crossed swords, and as an MFO before transferring to the Citadel." He leaned forward on his elbows. "So yes, I think you could say I'm well informed."

Shepard folded his arms across his chest. "I'm currently using a Logic Arrest VII linked to a neural implant I've had since childhood. But I've always lusted after the Savant line of omnitools. Do you have access to those?"

The turian tilted his head. "Savants are made on Thessia, and they're actually meant to be used with a Serrice biotic amp. You don't show up here as a biotic." He gestured at the holographic display.

"They're still really powerful 'tools. Do you have them?"

The turian managed to look irked. "Not here. But I know that there are asari Spectres who use them. So you may need to check with the Spectre Office in Sector Two, near the asari embassy, when you have the time for your full medical integration scan done."

"If I get any equipment issued here but don't fire it before I get there, can I exchange it there?"

The turian sat back in his chair, "Commander, when you are issued equipment by your Alliance, it is my understanding that you do not pay for it. Is this true?"

He shrugged. "To a degree. You're given a budget, though. So it's smart to spend more on critical gear, or to upgrade your armor on your own. I'm an engineer, so I spent big on my omnitool, and didn't buy a shotgun at all."

The turian held up a taloned hand in an obviously human gesture. "My point is that this is a different world. It is not a retail exchange when we're outfitting you. You're being equipped with the best equipment the collected Council races can get. Your life and mission depend on it. Of course, if you hire or use freelancers, they will officially have to buy their own equipment, but you are welcome to return current equipment for new equipment and supplies at any time, and in any condition."

Dasinian looked severely at the human as he rose from his chair and stepped over to the equipment arrayed on the wall. "Obviously, this could be abused for personal gain. So be warned, human. The Spectres have enemies, and it will be important that you give them no opportunity to hinder our mission: Preserve peace in the galaxy. It is a responsibility unlike any other, and as much will be asked of you, much will be offered in order to ensure your success."

The plates above the turian's eyes rose; **Indicates altruism**, said a callout on Shepard's ARO.

"Providing an agent to the Spectres is a significant obligation, both to the Council and to the source government," he said. "I doubt your own government would have selected you without being confident in your discretion." He raised a hand to the display. "Whatever weapons, armor, specialized equipment, or other technology can I offer you to improve your chances of success are yours for the asking. If you can not understand why this is so, or if you think this is merely a financial opportunity, I suggest you return to your Captain and inform him that you are not well-suited to this task."

Without waiting for Shepard to reply, Dasinian glanced at his omnitool, turned and selected a pistol from the wall. "However, I see that you are wearing an Alliance sidearm. I think you will find _this_ a great improvement." He extended the weapon to the Commander, grip first.

**Spectre Pistol-M VII (2182)**, said Shepard's ARO. **Chassis officially supports 710g deep modification.**

He took the grip with his left hand, passed the weapon to his right; it felt heavy and solid. As his VI pulled specs from the display's p-net, it populated his ARO with technical callouts, and then with comparative information about his current sidearm.

**17.2g woven-eezo epitaxial linac with 64kV 2ns launcher, SkunkArb GmbH electronics with crosslinked alritresigon fibre shielding, biometric security, and Brinnister Expert suite of omnitool-compatible service apps and automation.**

Turning it around, he nodded approvingly. "Now that's a hell of a pistol." He started to hand the weapon back.

"And it's _yours_, Spectre." Dasinian pointed at the SmartClip on Shepard's right thigh. "Even unmodified, it should easily outperform your old weapon."

Shepard lifted his Stiletto-IV off its SmartClip and held it up next to the Spectre pistol.

Touching his left thumb to middle fingertip, he subvocalized, _Captain, this office apparently doesn't do the medical scan, and doesn't have the omnitool I want. Should I just come over now?_

There was a pause as the message was converted and routed, and the Captain replied,

**D. Anderson: That would be good.**

The turian let him study the weapons for a moment before continuing, "Speaking of which, if you wish to retire that, I would be happy to take it."

"Hmm. Not yet," Shepard looked down at the pistol. "At the moment, it's still a Known Good."

"Very well. If you prefer to hand-carry one out, I'd suggest a case." He stooped, lifted a pistol case out from the bottom section of the display, and flipped it open on the desk.

Shepard nestled his older weapon into the protective intelligel case, and lit his omnitool. "Thanks. I'll get some time on the range with that when I'm not taking up your time, too." Pressing a switch on the new pistol, he started its acquisition protocol from his omnitool, continuing to hold it as the omnitool transferred his preferences, logged the transfer of ownership with the Citadel and Alliance, and imprinted his e-sig, updated his p-net inventory, and asked him if the change of pistol was temporary or permanent.

He reached into the air in front of himself, touched the ARO's virtualized key for **Permanent**, and holstered the weapon.

The turian pointed across the room. "Speaking of which, be aware that the Academy has a ten-lane range on level six, other side of the atrium."

"Level six shooting range…good to know. Thank you." Shepard reached over his shoulder and drew his "big gun," the Equalizer VI. "My weapon of choice is my sniper rifle. What do you have in that?"

Dasinian looked from the rifle to Shepard and back. "Quite a weapon; would you excuse some professional curiosity about where you got it?"

"Not at all. It was a joint operation a few months ago with a turian group, uh…" his VI displayed the group number on his ARO, "the 126th Spec Ops. The CO and I were talking, and I found out that he collects–"

"That he collects Alliance weapons," Dasinian finished with him. "Congratulations, Commander. That was the Blackwatch, and they were probably evaluating you even then. As a Spectre, you should be aware that the Blackwatch do not have a unit number; _that_ at least was a misdirection."

He tapped the sniper rifle once with a talon. "The Equalizer would normally be an excellent choice. If you prefer to engage at range, you will like this." He turned and activated a selector on the display; the shelf of sniper rifles tilted back and retracted, revealing four other shelves, one of which slid out and tilted down. Dasinian selected the one closest to himself, lifted it out and presented it to Shepard.

**Spectre SASR-A VII (2182). Chassis officially supports 2120g deep modification.**

With his omnitool still lit, he started its acquisition; his ARO added, **54.4g matrixed-eezo epitaxial multicaliber linac with 196kV 5ns launcher, Odin ammoblock with aero variable shaver, UV combo laser rangefinder/stabilizer/distortion compensator, biometric security, Brinnister Expert suite, including a remote-controlled or VI-operated sentry-gun system when used with servo tripod.**

The relative specs were simply awe-inspiring. Besides the fact that it could throw a half-gram slug, the Odin ammoblock could deliver each round in a variety of configurations, optimized for cyclic rate, force, range, accuracy, or several combinations thereof.

Dasinian had put another case on the desk, and Shepard laid his Equalizer inside it. Lifting the the Spectre weapon from the desk, he compacted it and attached it to his SmartPak.

"Now here's something that might be nice," Shepard said. Still reaching over his shoulder, he grabbed the stock of his Avenger as it extended. "I've spent a disproportional amount of time and money on my sniper rifle, but I've never quite been happy enough with an assault rifle to seriously rely on it." He offered the rifle to the turian. "If you can put an uncompromised AR in my hands, this will be a really great day."

The turian dreiffed his fringe. (Shepard only knew this because his ARO put a callout on it as the spikes lifted and lowered quickly: **Fringe "dreif" – a highly contextualized informal gesture indicating various degrees of friendship, amusement, or smug self-approval.**) "Then allow me to introduce you to the 2183 Spectre-grade assault rifle VII."

Shepard put his Avenger on the desk as Dasinian hefted a matte black rifle and presented it to him. Its ultramarine indicators glowed briefly as he gripped it, showing an unused ammoblock.

He turned toward the door, kerclacking the ammoblock into place and dropping to one knee as he did. It gripped easily, balanced perfectly, and felt meaty and strong without being cumbersome. It nearly purred in his hands; the scope alone would probably have set him back a month's pay. This wasn't just a gun, it was _art_.

**Spectre Assault Rifle-M VII (2183). Chassis officially supports 1220g deep modification.**

"This…is an assault rifle's wet dream of itself," Shepard hefted the weapon and stood again.

Dasinian seemed quite pleased. "I'm glad to have offered something of such value to you, Agent."

With his omnitool still lit, Shepard started its acquisition.

His ARO added, **34.4g matrixed-eezo epitaxial linac with 96kV 2ns launcher, Odin ammoblock with aero variable shaver, VI-assisted stabilized sight with infrared, biometric security…**

He didn't bother to finish reading it. Gripping the rifle by its stock, Shepard held it where the SmartPak could reach it. Its compaction seemed quieter than he was used to. _Good for covert ops_, he realized. He smiled unconsciously.

Out of habit, he touched his left thumb to index finger, and lit his omnitool as a social cue. "This has been a very valuable meeting, Latarn Dasinian. My Captain has just messaged me to join him in a meeting, so I'm afraid I'll have to leave before I think we've finished. Can you supply another case large enough to fit my pistol and assault rifle?"

"Of course." Dasinian produced a sniper rifle case that accommodated both weapons. "I'm glad we had this meeting, Agent." He moved to returned the pistol case to its storage.

"Thank you for your time, Latarn," Shepard carried the two cases out and up the stairs.

As he crossed the atrium to the elevator that would take him to _Normandy_'s dock, he smiled to himself; carrying the two large cases made him a little self-conscious.

*** Glossary ***

AGAS: Alliance General Accounting Service

Biosuit (or "b-suit"): unlike a pressurized EVA suit where the entire volume of the suit is pressurized, a biosuit pressurizes only the helmet, and uses an intelligent material that flexes and bends as needed, in much the way that Spandex™ does, but without allowing the body to dry out. Technically a "space activity suit," the biosuit is only one of several ways to solve this problem, though as of 2183 it is the most widely used.

CAO: Council Accounting Office

CHA: Cord-Hislop Aerospace

Convertisuit (or "c-suit"): A snugly-fitting garment that can be converted into an EVA-ready biosuit in a matter of seconds. In most cases, the helmet must be manually donned, but more expensive systems can be added to automate sealing. Though not meant for long-duration exposure, most garments worn by space station inhabitants have convertisuit capability, but not all of them look like it, depending on the source. For example, Minimum Subsistence Allocation (MSA) clothes in such places are frequently not as artful.

Darhurst: A human news service, founded by a whistleblower in the early 21st century. Purportedly thorough in verifying its facts, Darhurst fell on hard times around 2176 when a hacktivist group – which some claim was created by an organization that had been exposed by Darhurst journalists – started feeding false information to Darhurst producers.

ERC: Encryption Redundancy Check. Most users have multiple protocols of encryption protecting their local (p-net) data and data exchanges. ERC is a meta-protocol that accelerates computation by re-encrypting only once what has been or would be encrypted multiple times by competing encryptions. Early versions were crackable, but since 2172's advent of 2.4Gb encryption "laces," it would take longer than the age of the universe to crack even with quantum brute force methods. Of course, VIs have been tasked with cracking them, and the next generation of encryption (due out in early 2184) is expected to use dedicated, quantum-entangled VIs that change the encryption on the fly.

HUD: Heads-Up Display

ILO: Interservice Liaison Officer

Latarn (pl. latarna): turian equivalent of a Staff Sergeant

MFO: Master Fabrication Officer

PDT: Procedural Decision Tree

RTM: RealTime Messaging

WO-2: Warrant Officer Grade Two


	24. Chapter 24: David Anderson

A/N: Sorry to be late again. Still trying to find a house, and to find the things we need to live out of boxes at our friend's house. Shoutout to Anita Gale of the Space Settlement Design Competition; thanks, Anita. Not as much quality control time invested on this chapter (busy with other things. I expect to get off the Citadel fairly early in the next chapter.)

*** David Anderson ***

On the way up to _Normandy_'s dock, a news report talked about some biotic terrorists taking over a compound, but the elevator reached dock 42-2 before they could really say anything of significance about it.

Striding along the platform, Shepard noticed no fewer than eight crews working on the ship exterior; all of them looked like they were in a hurry. He slid up to the edge of the railing and waited for his ARO to update him with the changes or repairs being made.

Several of the belly armor panels were being rewoven in place, and the #3 and #4 engines were having at least one of their three thrust vector rings replaced. That made him frown; it almost always meant they had purged or lost an eezo container.

His ARO put a callout on the armor and engines. **Damage from ground fire, Eden Prime**, it explained.

The ship had taken quite a beating defending the colonists. He hoped they had been able to help them.

Turning his attention on the open hangar, he saw a jumbled mass of supplies were floating out in front of the gaping hangar door. Alliance stevedores in powersuits shuttled back and forth, pushing the palletized cargo ahead of them. The manifest appeared on the left side of his field of view; he read a few of the items as they scrolled by:

**Restock - 24kg - CHON paste  
****Restock - 92kg - ****Metallipaste (omnigel, inactive)  
****Restock - 170kg - ****Omnigel paste (active)  
****Restock - 38kg - ****Poly paste and polymerizing compositor  
****Replacement - 1x - ****D-50-CATx Molecular disassembler  
****Correction - 3x - ****BC4-2/6 Biodeconstructor culturing feedstock  
****New - 1x - ****G4 127/a Fuel pretreatment chamber lining cleaner  
****Replacement - 2x - MDS-12c **** D****isassembly microdiscriminator and sorter  
****New - 1x - PGT**** Petronic Gravity Target**

The rest of it looked like the usual consumables: ammoblocks, fresh water, fuel, scrubber fluids, molecular defolders, water filters, and so on. Turning to his right again, he continued to the gangway. As the ship was docked, the airlock cycled relatively quickly.

The boatswain VI announced, "XO Shepard is aboard. OD Pressly stands relieved."

Standing opposite the inner door was an orange-jumpsuited tech, arms full of cables and equipment. Overhead service panels dripped with cables and dangling modules. "Welcome aboard, sir."

Shepard's ARO put translucent callouts on the equipment, identifying the systems that were offline because of the work being performed. "Thanks. Looks like your team's got a short clock. Something I should know about?"

"Sorry, sir; I only have a task and a deadine. Whatever it's about, it just came down the pipe maybe an hour ago. Ship's being fitted with a new comm system."

_That_ was a surprise. "We're _what_? Who approved that?" He lit his omnitool and checked his messages; not a word about it. The status board showed it, though he had to summon the app to see it, and a number of other changes to the ship and complement. And all of it appeared to have been authorized, but at levels of the Alliance he didn't usually see.

The tech shook her head. "I don't get asked, sir." She gave him a look that added, _I get told_. "But Air Boss actually stopped the resupply so Construction could drop new transmitters in. Your Comms Chief finished integrating it before the crane was even secured." The tech gave him a look of disbelief. "He said it was just an upgrade, but you must have some fire-breather computing aboard." As Shepard walked along Ops Alley, the tech followed, carrying her armload of devices and cables. "So you really don't know what it's about, sir?"

"I do not," Shepard answered, "but I think the Captain was about to inform me." He waved his omnitool briefly. "Maybe I should shut up and get to that meeting...but I can sometimes be really bad at taking good advice."

The tech stopped at one of the dark consoles and touched a control on it. As the overhead panel lowered with a servo buzz, she agreed, "Thank you, sir."

# # #

As he continued aft, Shepard noticed that the chaos level seemed unusually high. Service panels were off practically every surface, temporary cables snaked their way across the deck, and people in bright orange jumpsuits were everywhere. It actually looked worse than the week before launch.

With a growing sense of urgency, he took the two cases down to his locker, secured the weapons, and headed back to the airlock.

** K. Kobunde: Commander, do you have any special requests for stowage? We have some nonstandard equipment coming aboard, and I may have to improvise.**

It wasn't often Shepard heard from the Loadmaster. He gestured for RTM. _Send me a list of any interesting equipment, _he subvocalized_. Sorry I was out of the loop yesterday; one alien encounter and it seems like the whole world changed._

** K. Kobunde: ****That's why I'm asking, sir. There is a 2-pallet crate for you. It's got a Council seal on it, and it's closed up as tight as the turian's gear. It doesn't show any hazardous material, but it makes me curious.**

_Can you park it someplace safe for now? I'll crack it open as soon as I can. Is it easy to spot?_

**K. Kobunde: ****It's two full pallets, sir. You could live in it. And it has Council markings all over it in five languages. I'll secure it forward of the FWS, at N72-74.**

_Got it. Thanks for the heads-up._

Shepard gestured for new RTM. _Captain, there's a new comm system being installed, and I wasn't notified. There's also a bunch of new cargo that CPL Kobunde can't scan._

** D. Anderson: Right, sorry. As a Spectre, you'll need a hotline to the Council, which requires new hardware. I didn't realize you were going to do anything other than drop off the quarian. Just come on up as soon as you can.**

_I'm on my way now, sir._

# # #

Assuming he had a minute or two to study the weapon more closely, Shepard drew the new pistol as the taxi door closed. He preferred a pistol for its quick-draw capability, and he found he could be more accurate, but had always felt that semi-auto was serious compromise. And yet this Spectre pistol felt almost magical in his hand.

He toggled the decompaction, aiming it down at the floor as it configured; it opened noticeably faster than anything he'd used before. With the same matte-black finish and ultramarine indicators as the sniper rifle, it seemed to be slightly grip-heavier than his Stiletto-IV. He turned his hand over, looking at the other side before releasing it to his SmartClip and drawing the new assault rifle.

Its heat sink was larger and lighter than he'd seen elsewhere. Gesturing for 4x acceleration, he VRSed the weapon to analyze it. The differences were technical and unusual, and his armor VI ran a quick search which revealed little that was informative from his current NetBite.

He squinted at it; taking this to indicate he was unsatisfied, the armor VI sent a message up the p-net hierarchy to the omnitool, which routed the request to the Citadel's local network. Once he had been identified as a Spectre, classified data flowed with security warnings and updated encryption.

The technical briefing was prefaced with an abstract that told him what he wanted to know: exotic metamaterials beyond the capabilities of most microfacturing were required, but gave the weapon's linac a higher efficiency for its weight. The exact specifications were in the article, but he waved it away and slowed to normal cognitive speed; the skycar was descending to the embassy's taxi landing threshhold.

Captain Anderson was standing next to the taxi caller as the door sprang open.

Shepard stepped out of the taxi and saluted. "Sir? Am I that late?"

Anderson answered the salute with amusement. "No, Udina's gone to one of the Councillors for a private meeting. I needed some air." He shrugged. "And I wanted a word with you before you hear it from him." He turned and started to walk back to the Embassy. Shepard walked with him across the foyer, watching his CO look uncomfortable. "A Spectre can't answer to anyone but the Council. I'm leaving _Normandy_."

"You're…what? You mean they're going to install some Council _handler_ as Captain?"

"No, I mean _you're_ going to get command of the ship. Congratulations are in order; this will be your first. I wish I could have given you more warning about it."

"I'd been meaning to ask you about that…I mean, about the mission, sir. I remember you'd told Alenko and me that we'd look back on this mission and be proud. And that you knew the Spectres wanted to have a look at me; you knew what Agent Nihlus was there for. Pressly reminded me that no one sends Spectres on shakedown flights. Even Joker was wise to this being bigger than it looked."

Anderson nodded as they climbed the stairs. "Yes, the signs were there, but I didn't know what was going to happen, so I couldn't say anything. I also had to keep it from you until the Council actually decided what to do. I sure didn't know it was all going to go to hell like it did. Oh, and when Udina tells you, don't tell him I told you already." He held up a hand to end the topic. "But we don't have time. We're trying to get you out there hunting Saren as quickly as possible. Because he's been doing this for so long, and been so trusted by so many, he's amassed significant resources, and an asset freeze on him just isn't going to stop him from doing a lot of damage. We've just got to stop him as quickly as possible. If it were up to me, I'd gun him down myself."

Shepard turned and looked at his Captain in surprise. _Terminate With Extreme Prejudice_ sounded quite out of character for the man who had done his best to be a father to him. Though Anderson had been in command of the mission that had taken his father, the Captain had taken it for more personally than he had any right to. Neither Anderson nor Shepard's mother had ever told him the whole story, but Stephen knew that there was something being kept from him. He trusted both of them enough to let it be; it wasn't as if he could do anything about it now.

"That bad, sir?"

Anderson returned the look, nodded grimly. "That bad, Commander. You don't know Saren like I do."

Shepard looked away briefly, hesitating to bring up what was clearly a sensitive subject. "You and Saren have a history, sir. If you don't mind me asking…what happened?"

Anderson sighed as the doors to the embassy slid open for them. No one else was in sight. "I was in your shoes twenty years ago, Stephen. They were considering me for the Spectres." He strode across the entrance to the desk, pulled the chair out and sat down. "So I was part of a mission to the Skyllian Verge. I was working with Saren to find and remove a known terrorist threat." He shook his head. "Saren eliminated his target. But a lot of people died along the way. Innocent people. And the official records just…_covered it all up_. But I saw how he operates. No conscience. No hesitation. He'd kill a thousand innocent civilians to end a war without a second thought."

"Killing innocents doesn't end wars. It _causes_ them." Shepard folded his arms. "But truly, if I was confident that doing so would accomplish that…well, you're paying a thousand lives for…millions? Billions? Doesn't take algebra to figure that's about the best math you can hope for."

"I know how the world works." Anderson leaned forward on the desk. "Sometimes you're forced to make unpleasant decisions. But only if there's no other way. Saren doesn't even look for another option. He's twisted, broken. He likes the violence, the killing. And he knows how to cover his tracks."

"Or get the Council to do it for him?"

"Pick your battles." Anderson growled and changed the subject with a shake of his head. "I also have an update about _Normandy_," he said. "We just got a Mako APC." He checked himself, "I mean, _you _just got a Mako. It'll make your operations much faster and more efficient because you won't have to land the whole ship."

"Your idea?"

Anderson seemed briefly reluctant. "Well, sort of. I'll have to take the credit _and _the blame. _Normandy _was originally spec'ed for a flyer, probably a Coyote or one of the new Kodiaks. But when the design was changed to make her perform better in ship-to-ship, there wasn't room for the infrastructure the Coyote needed. They were going to put in an M29."

Shepard reacted. "_That _would have been nice to have on Eden Prime. What happened?"

"The Grizzly is well-armed and armored. But that makes them even heavier than a Coyote, even considering how much infrastructure you don't need in the hangar. On the other hand, the Mako is smaller, faster, and multi-role: APC, light tank, landing vehicle."

Shepard nodded. "Yeah…I read an article about it in Aviation Leak. The M35 even adds a two-kilometer solid-fuel return booster. _What happened?_"

Anderson put on an elbow on the desk and leaned forward. "I got the project lead and her bureaucracy to replace the M29 with an S34." He nodded thoughtfully, "Remind me to tell you about how you can get more done over a burrito lunch with the Finance team than you can over a day wasted at golf with the so-called power brokers."

"I think you just did." Shepard deadpanned.

Anderson nodded and grinned. "Anyway, at first, the turian engineers were miffed. Seems they had been hoping for a look at the M29. But one of them – an intern I think – pointed out that the M35 could use much of the same support gear as the S34. They were willing to let us use their facilities to build it, but it was going to take an extra couple of weeks to get on the schedule." Anderson shrugged. "What could I say? If I wanted the Alliance to build it, it was going to be months of waiting." He shook his head sadly. "I didn't expect that not having it on a simple pick-up operation would be a problem."

Shepard sighed. "Well, I don't think it would have made a difference for Spectre Nihlus." He shook his head. "I hope they can fix him…"

"I wouldn't give that guy another thought. You did damned good by him. Anyway, I think the M35 will work better for you on this mission." Anderson nodded confidently. "And your Spectre status will let you drop right into a situation without using local ITC, or having to play with planetary customs authorities." He paused for effect. "You have no idea how much time and headache that will save you."

"Sure I do…well, some of it. My job is to do part of your job so you don't have to do all of it. Or…at least it was. Now I get to do all of it." There was a momentary silence between them. Shepard studied the few awards that Anderson actually bothered to wear. He shook his head. "Not to be ungrateful, skipper…but this is a huge leap. And _Normandy_ is supposed to be your boat. Why are they giving you the boot instead?

"Aw, I've fought it for as long as I could, but when you get to having enough experience, the brass wants you to be able to spread that knowledge around, be at the places where big decisions are made. I was never going to command _Normandy_…not long term. Until the Spectre thing got dropped in our laps, I think they were going to assign her to Mikhailovich." He frowned as he looked away in thought. "It's fine by me, though; I'd rather take the XO spot somewhere nice and obscure. Do more teaching." He had a faraway look and a hint of a smile as he added, "Shape the next generation." He smacked the table decisively, stood and paced the length of the room. "But you will be officially out of my reach. Admiral Hackett is going to be your primary point of contact with the Alliance from now on."

"Admiral Hackett? What the…? Why not you? Or shouldn't it be one of the Admiral's staff?"

Anderson shook his head. "If you get requests from the Alliance, they will now be at very high levels of clearance, and only at the Admiral's discretion." He reached into a small alcove behind the desk and took the cup and saucer that had lifted into place there.

"It'll help you a lot," he continued. "The higher your access point, and less you have to officially interact with the Alliance, the less chance for security to be compromised, and for the brass to treat you like a Corsair they can just call down when they have some awkward problem. You will probably get a lot more of the strategic stuff that needs to be carried out quietly; heavy-briefing jobs, where context is important." He paused dramatically, made eye contact. "And you will be under no obligation to carry them out. As a Spectre, you answer to the Council, not the Alliance."

The door hissed open suddenly; Udina started to walk in, balked at the sight of the two men at his desk, and continued his entrance. "I have big news, Shepard. Captain Anderson is stepping down as Commanding Officer. You're being given command of the _Normandy_."

Anderson agreed, "She's quick and quiet, and you know the crew. Perfect ship for a Spectre. Treat her well, Commander."

Shepard broke off his next question, and played along. "I'll take good care of her, sir."

"I know you will, Commander." Both of them slipped easily into "formal mode" in the presence of others; it was something they had been doing for years. "But if I'm focused on Saren, handling a whole ship will be even more trouble. So why are you leaving, sir?"

Anderson shrugged. "As a Spectre, you need your own ship. And it's time for me to step down."

"I won't let you down, sir."

"Your primary task will be to find Saren," Udina put his hands behind his back and walked past the desk toward the balcony. "We don't know where he's gone. But we know what he's after: The Conduit. He's got his geth scouring the system looking for clues. We've lost contact with our colony on Feros, and there were reports of geth activity on Noveria..."

Shepard interrupted, "The _reapers_ are the real threat."

Without looking back at the two soldiers, Udina shook his head. "I'm with the Council on this one, Shepard. I don't think they really exist."

Anderson said, "But if they do exist, the Conduit's they key to bringing them back. Stop Saren from getting the Conduit and we stop the Reapers from returning. But there are more geth than Saren; so start by looking where the geth are."

"That's why I want you to head for Feros," Udina continued.

Shepard looked to his Captain. "What's important about Feros?" His ARO started to display colony data; Shepard gestured for the device to hold it for later.

"The entire planet used to be a single, massive Prothean city," Anderson explained. "Mostly ruins now. But some of the infrastructure is still intact. The colony tried to build on what the Protheans left behind. We lost all contact with them when the geth attacked."

Shepard had his doubts about Udina's motivations. "What about this other place…Noveria?"

"Noveria's trouble," Anderson replied. "Always has been. The whole planet's basically a center for corporations to conduct illegal research. Watch your back there, Shepard. Spectres are about the only form of Citadel authority Noveria respects, but they aren't popular."

Shepard's ARO scrolled data about the various chartering corporations and their PR briefings. He gestured for it to hold that as well.

"Why would I look there, sir?"

"There's actual video of a geth. With Feros, there were reports, but nothing substantial. The colony going silent may simply be bad timing."

Shepard looked doubtful.

"We have one more lead," Udina said reluctantly. "Matriarch Benezia, the other voice in that recording. She has a daughter, a scientist who specializes in the Protheans. We don't know if she's involved, but it might be a good idea to try and find her…see what she knows. Her name's Liara. Doctor Liara T'Soni. We have reports she was on an archaeological dig in the Artemis Tau cluster."

Shepard's ARO displayed a head shot of the asari, and records of the dig and its sponsoring university. "Sounds like the most solid lead of the three," Shepard mused, "At least I know what I'm looking for."

Anderson trusted his former XO's intuition. He nodded. "Finding Dr. T'Soni is the most indirect link to Saren. But it's your decision, Commander. You're a Spectre now. You don't answer to us."

Udina still wanted it done his way: _Protect the colonists_. "But your actions still reflect on humanity as a whole. You make a mess and I get stuck cleaning it up. If the colony on Feros is already in trouble…"

Shepard had already considered the added burden of Eden Prime and the toll it was surely taking on the Earth representative. "We're all in this together, Ambassador," he interrupted. "I'll try not to make things any more difficult for you."

"Not exactly the answer I was looking for, but it'll do. Remember, you were a human long before you were a Spectre." He glanced at his left arm with annoyance as his omnitool buzzed for attention. "I have a meeting to get to; Captain Anderson can answer any other questions you might have."

Shepard's ARO winked at him: **Urgent: Command Transfer Ceremony in 30 minutes at Alliance Dock 42-2. Report immediately to assume command of SSV _Normandy _SR-1.** Shepard looked at Anderson in shock.

"No, that's me," Anderson said to Shepard, "and we have to be there, too. I assume you're looking at me like that because you just got updated."

"All right then, come on, we'll share a taxi," Udina said.

He led the way out of the embassy, down stairs to the left and into the connecting chamber, and out the right-hand door to the parking lot.

# # #

_Dearest family:_

_I'm sending this to all of you because I may be out of touch for a while. It's not a bad thing: I got a place aboard the newest Alliance ship I've ever seen. Father, you'll be pleased to hear we're hunting geth. I get to sleep in an actual pod, eat every day, and have access to the latest tech._

_An Earth Alliance officer, the one who saved me from the Shadow Broker, must really like me, because he's fitted me with a new set of armor and updates to both my weapons. Tell Kal'Reegar I'm doing what he said and going with chameleon black. The other officer who's been helping me get settled in has been really friendly and informative, but she said I might not have access to the extranet all the time, and there might be security considerations, so I can't say much. This ship is just so beautiful and new, simply oozing with VOCs. I've never even dreamed of anything like it. I wish you could all see me now._

_I miss you all very much, and if this is what a Pilgrimage is like, I can understand why people come back home as fast as they can, and why they sometimes don't. Father, I'm attaching the data structure I found in the geth so you can start analyzing it right away. I hope you get as much from it as I think you will._

_Tali'Zora nar Rayya_

# # #

As the taxi arced its way around the Presidium Ring, its occupants were missing the view.

"Sir, they can't do this," Shepard objected. "We just got posted. You're the CO…you haven't even finished unpacking; I've seen your quarters."

"You've seen _your_ quarters," Anderson corrected, "And aren't you glad you won't be finding secret stashes." He raised a hand to prevent Shepard objecting further. "Forget it. We're done talking about this, Commander. I'll have my effects cleared out of your ship within two hours."

Udina was still facing forward, looking out the windshield but seeing nothing. "As a Spectre, you'll be glad to be light on your feet. Since you're taking the whole crew with you, just delegate the responsibilities out to your officers." He lit his omnitool and worked at it for a moment. "Your Navigation Officer looks like he was being groomed for an XO position anyway; if I were you, I'd pull him up behind you. You also have another First Lieutenant, Alenko. He seems quite reliable. You should make the most of him."

Shepard looked toward the ambassador, then at Anderson, who shrugged. "Thank you, sir; I'll keep that in mind."

Anderson nodded decisively at Shepard. "Whatever happens, I'm proud of you, son." He paused, sighed heavily. "And damn it all to hell, I wish Dane could have seen this. He'd just explode with pride."

Shepard winced inwardly, smiled faintly out the window. "Yeah, I know. But thanks for saying so."

As his VI passed on some information to him, Udina spoke to Anderson, "Looks like you got your Command Transfer Ceremony approved…and the turians are sending a representative. It certainly was at the last minute. Looks like we'll be arriving just in time, though."

Shepard turned to look out the window. "And the crew's already dockside."

As the taxi slid up to the dock, Shepard could hear the Alliance anthem, _Per Aspera Ad Astra_, being played by the dock band. Bright brass and mother-of-pearl gleamed and flashed in the light. As the final bars of the song were played, a row of six soldiers with ceremonial black powder firearms raised their weapons in salute, firing together, manually reloading the ancient bolt-action guns with another salvo of blanks, and firing again; they discharged a three-round salutes for the Captain and the ambassador as they approached the dais with Shepard following.

The crew rose from their seats at a command barked by Navigator Pressly, saluting the Alliance ensign. As they stepped up onto the dais, Shepard and Anderson stopped and saluted; Udina crossed the stage with the hum, hiss, and occasional warning horn of the Alliance dock filling the silence.

Stopping behind the podium, the ambassador looked left, and right, and then said, "Thank you very much. I know you're all working hard to stay on schedule, so I'll be as brief as possible. Please be seated."

Pressly's voice was crisp, "_Paraaade REST!_"

The crew remained standing, but attentive; the three guests in the front row – Tali the quarian and two turians Shepard didn't recognize - took their seats. Udina looked at the standing crew with momentary consternation, then touched his omnitool, read from its display. "This is a notable day in the history of humanity; we have earned a Spectre agent, and recognition by the galactic community as a force to be reckoned with. You should all be very proud of Captain Anderson, who in many ways made it possible. I'll let your commanding officer tell you more, but your new mission is time-sensitive." He looked to his right as he stepped away from the podium. "Captain Anderson?"

David Anderson strode across the dais, stopping just past the podium, between Udia and the crew. Hands clasped behind his back, he paced he stage, giving the impression he was thinking aloud. "All right, here's the deal: To succeed, you need to know the truth, but this is for your ears only, at least for the moment. Eden Prime was attacked by Saren Arterius, a former Council Spectre. He was using geth, a type of AI. We're not sure how or why, but he attacked one human colony, so we know he's a threat to all of them. Although the Council has revoked Saren's status, he is still very much a threat to humans with geth help."

He stopped and turned, facing the crew. "Commander Shepard has been asked to join the Spectres, and find Saren. As the ambassador said, this is a momentous event, but it is also a serious one. You may be going places where humans have never been, and where you may not be welcomed. Or you may simply be misunderstood. I will be counting on each and every one of you to be expert, professional, and vigilant when on duty. We are the newcomers here; as I've said before, the asari were discovering the Citadel when Emperor Yang was plotting to kill his father. With each alien you meet, remember: _You_ are the alien, _you_ are the noob."

He paused, looking meaningfully at the gathered crew. "I've been part of the Systems Alliance for over thirty years, and when I was asked to assemble a crew for _Normandy_, I called on the very best and brightest people I've worked with. You didn't have time to get to know each other when we went to Eden Prime, but you all performed admirably, especially considering the circumstances. I want you to know your work was exemplary, and I've recommended you all for a citation. You saved the colony on Eden Prime, and it has been a privilege and an honor to serve with each and every one of you."

He turned crisply to his right, and made eye contact with Shepard. "I am ready to be relieved."

Shepard stepped torward Anderson, and lit his omnitool. "Bureau of Alliance Personnel Order Number 2287-18/121 to Captain David Anderson. When directed by reporting officer, detach in January 2183 from command of SSV _Normandy_ and report not later than March 2183 to Systems Alliance Headquarters, Vancouver. Upon arrival, report to Admiral Jane Mumford for assignment. Report immediate superior in command, if present, otherwise by message. Signed, Vice Admiral Reza Sandeghi, Chief of Fleet Personnel."

Shepard rendered the most exact and meaningful salute he could. "I relieve you, sir."

Anderson emulated Shepard's salute, and nodded his approval so faintly that only the two of them knew he had done so. "I stand relieved."

Shepard managed to keep his face expressionless, but his ARO had a surprise for him. ** : You should display the Council markings now.** Shepard's gaze jumped quickly from Anderson to the Alliance pin on the Captain's collar, the ensign on _Normandy_'s portside hull, Udina, and then Pressly.

Reading from his ARO prompt, he said, "Break the Council pennant."

Pressly looked at the ambassador as well, then at his omnitool, and adjusted it. "Aye, sir."

The five-arm Council ensign winked on under the Alliance flag, trailing the Spectre insignia.

Shepard moved to the podium and spent a moment looking at the small crew of his first command. "I've known Captain Anderson most of my life, and when he says you're the best crew he's ever had, I believe him…and I'm deeply honored. He leaves some mighy big shoes to fill, but I will do my best to be worthy of your respect. It will be my privilege to serve as your commanding officer, and I'm confident we can find Saren and bring him to justice.

"All standing orders, regulations, and instructions remain in effect. Lieutenant Pressly, take charge and dismiss the ship's company."

As the _de facto_ XO dismissed the crew, Shepard turned and walked toward him quickly. Three-round gun salutes sounded from the other end of the slip for Udina and Anderson, and Shepard's ARO informed him that the third gun salute was for the new CO of _Normandy_.

He glanced at Captain Anderson and slowed his pace just a bit. _I have to be the Captain now,_ he thought carefully. "Pressly, what's the word on the refit and repair timetable?"

The navigator consulted his omnitool, made an adjustment, read from it again. "Dockmaster says it'll be four more hours…and stay the hell out of her way or it'll be six." He looked up at Shepard and half-grinned.

Shepard looked called up the Event Scheduler on his ARO. "I still need another couple of hours here. Sounds like there's no chance of us getting underway before 2100; put the crew at liberty until 2030 hours. Asymmetry permitted, max ten kilos accrual, no packout." He glanced over his shoulder at the crew re-boarding the ship. "It's not a lot of time, but it's something."

"Three hours' liberty, asymmetry, ten kilos, no packout. Aye sir."

"And no kidding: anyone not back by 2030 gets docked two weeks' pay."

Pressley's eyebrows rose. "Will do, sir."

_I have to pick up the quarian's weapons and see if I can get to the Spectre Office_, Shepard thought. His ARO's display of the ship's status winked off, and then began to repopulate with the CO's even busier list. Walking toward the dock's personnel lift, he began to select items from the list and flick them toward the names of the appropriate personnel.

"Commander!" said a voice as footsteps announced someone running up behind him. He dimmed the ARO display with a gesture and looked over his shoulder to see WO2 Rosamund Draven and Tali. "Sir, I wanted to congratulate you," Draven saluted as she came to a stop. "Talitha and I are just super-proud of you."

Shepard had answered the salute immediately. "Thank you, Rosamund; it's a big day for the whole human race." He resumed his walk stationward. "Is there something I can do for you?"

"Yes, sir. First, please don't call me Rosamund. No one does that except my mother...and Tal when she's mad...just call me Roz. Second, contractor Tali'Zorah asked if we could go back to the shop and pick up her weapons if you hadn't already, but she also said you had said you were going to go. We'd be happy to go pick those up for you if you have something else more pressing."

"That's…thoughtful of you, Roz. In fact, I have a number of other things to take care of before we can depart, and if you would handle that one, I'd appreciate it."

"Glad to be of service, sir," she smiled.

As the three of them approached the personnel lift, Shepard noticed Anderson and Udina further along the slip, talking as they walked toward the place where the taxi had taken him and his team to the embassy. Anderson happened to look over his shoulder just then and make eye contact; he nodded approvingly before stepping through the door and out of sight.

"Mind if we share your lift?"

Shepard looked toward Roz before realizing she was speaking to the lift's occupants, not to him. The two turians who had been sitting in the front row during the Transfer Ceremony looked up. His ARO added Displa**iD** info: **Kasintha Yttrius, military ****attachée****; Etric Pliny, turian ambassador**.

"Commander Shepard," the ancient-looking Pliny spoke deliberately, articulating each word. "Why…it would be an honor." He took a generous step back to make room for them. "A great honor indeed."

Shepard's ARO added, **Expression indicates Surprise.**

"Thank you…uh…ambassador." Shepard stepped into the lift far enough that Tali and Rosamund had enough room. "In fact, I'm glad to have this opportunity to meet you in person. I suspect you were largely responsible for making possible both the construction of _Normandy_ and my appointment to the Spectres." He bowed slightly at the waist. "I'm very honored to meet you."

"Indeed," answered Pliny, "then allow me to introduce my _keeper_, Kasintha Yttrius. (He pronounced it, "ee-TREE-us.") She's had a direct hand in today's adventures, Commander. It was she whom your ambassador and Captain ambushed this afternoon, and it is she whom you should really be thanking." The turian put a hand to his mouth and removed a medical appliance; Shepard's ARO identified it as a device for demodulating his voice to make it sound more human. "Forgive me, Commander. This thing's been bothering me all morning." He regarded it with annoyance, and slipped it into a pocket.

There was an almost-awkward pause as he glanced at Shepard, the other human, the quarian, and then down at the glass-edged floor as if searching for something. He growled under his breath and shook his head absently.

The other turian glanced at Shepard. "Commander, on behalf of the Turian Heirarchy, I'd like to extend my personal–"

"Stop!" Pliny held up a three-digit hand with a wheeze, "This is my responsibility, and by the spirit of my house, _I will be responsible for it!_" Lowering his hand, he straightened and turned to face Shepard directly. It still seemed something of an effort for the turian to speak. "Commander, I suspect you are not fully aware of the significance of your actions on Eden Prime. But what you did there will reverberate throughout the Heirarchy for years to come.

"Kyrick Nihlus is an esteemed member of the Spectres, a nephew of a prominent member of the Parlaiment, and a dear friend of my own. I've known his family since before his parents met, and the day he became a Spectre was one of the proudest moments of my life."

**Spectre Agent Nihlus Kyrick is the grandson of former MP Etric Pliny**, scrolled out Shepard's ARO. He kept his expression neutral.

Pliny continued, though it was apparent he was struggling to keep his composure. "On that memorable day, I marked the five-year anniversary of the death of two of my children in the Relay 314 Incident, and I swore a mighty oath that young Nihlus would be the instrument of my revenge against the humans."

Yttrius looked anxiously from her ambassador to the human and back.

The older turian took a step toward Shepard, who stood his ground. "The first report I heard from your colony on Eden Prime…was that young Nihlus had been killed while taking a _human_…into his charge as a Spectre trainee. I assumed _you_ were the trainee and your incompetence or malice the cause." Though the turian's talons curled slowly into fists, Shepard's ARO did not warn him of an impending fight. He still gestured for 2x acceleration.

"So when the name _Shepard_ first crossed my mouth, it was the subject of a collection of curses and epithets that would make a batarian think he had gone too far." One hand rose – slowly by Shepard's perception – and a talon extended, but toward the turian's own cranial foreplate, and tapped it. "And now I hear that it was only because of _your actions_ that young Nihlus survived. And even more to my horror, it was _Saren Arterius_ \- the legendary _turian_ Spectre - who tried to kill him."

Shepard kept his attention on the talons. Turians were lethal predators on their homeworld; those talons could make short work of an unarmored human.

Pliny sighed, almost seemed to wither. Looking away and out the window as the lift descended to the C-Sec atrium, he said, "I have misjudged your species, Commander, and grossly misjudged you; I owe you an apology. I had intended your planet for megadeath, and you have repaid me...with a life, one I value even above my own." He looked up again, his cranial plates arranged oddly.

**Expression indicates regret, apology, emotional conflict**, said Shepard's ARO, putting a callout on the alien expression.

"You have plucked my grandson from the grave…and returned him to me." The words came out softly, "I do not know how much more life I have, Commander, but if there is ever anything I can do to repay you for this, you have but to ask." The talon came up once more; the turian tapped his own forehead once, and then carefully tapped Shepard's. "This debt I claim publicly."

The lift doors growled open; Pliny turned away and walked out as if nothing unusual had happened. Yttrius watched him, then turned her head to Shepard. She blinked once as if surprised, and then turned quickly away, flanking the elder statesman.

Shepard looked toward Rosamund and Tali, and then looked after the departing turians. "Right, then. Let's just…pretend that didn't happen. Things are weird enough." He stepped out of the lift and away toward the taxi stand.

They waited until he was out of earshot.

"That didn't sound like a direct order to me," Roz mused quietly.

"I'm not in the human military, so I _know_ it wasn't an order to me," Tali said.

Rosamund smiled. "I can see we're going to be _good friends_."

*** Glossary ***

accrual: In the context of shore leave, accrual refers to souvenirs, consumables, and other chattels purchased, won, or otherwise acquired by individual crew members..

asymmetry: When ashore, Alliance crews travel in groups of three. Since the number of crew ashore may not be evenly divisible by three, officers with records demonstrating sufficient decorum are allowed to travel in pairs to make the numbers work.

ARO: Augmented Reality Overlay

Aviation Week: The journalists of this magazine-turned-service are so thorough that news often escapes companies before intended, hence the epithet "Aviation Leak".

FWS: Fabrication Workshop, where the MFO lives. Everything on the ship that can be manufactured or reassembled ends up visiting the FWS, from lipsticks to small arms to engine parts. The FWS runs almost around the clock, even supplying consumables in some cases. Nanotech helps, but even elements are made of the same subatomics; picotech should be the next big step: turning anything into anything else at will.

ITC: Interplanetary Traffic Control; within a megameter of its surface, planetary or colonial governments have authority to deny landing permission, including any other bodies within that space, as well as the responsibility to provide emergency services, designate ascent and descent corridors, and so on.

packout: to take a duffel or footlocker or other storage item ashore, usually for purposes of bringing back more than was taken from the ship, or for removing contraband from it. Practice arose from attempts to confuse the boatswain VI into thinking a crew member was departing the ship.

short clock: scheduling analogue of a "blivit," a short clock is a week's worth of work to do in twenty minutes, or some similarly impossible feat.

VOC: Volatile Organic Compounds, a by-product of mass-production and additive microfacturing. The result is also known as "new car smell."

VRS: Virtual Reality Simulation, requires a voxel scan first, but provides a way to examine unfamiliar equipment without actually examining it. Works better in conjunction with cognitive overclock.


	25. Chapter 25: Departure

**A/N: **Over two weeks late, but twice the target length. I'd call that a wash, so I won't even apologize.

Kudos to artist LuckyFK for the original art of asari Commando Era T'Iar, available for your viewing pleasure on DeviantART dot com. Full disclosure: I had written this before I saw the art, but added a detailed description after. It's nice having graphics to go with things that aren't exactly canon, so I'll keep an eye out for more that seems relevant.

*** Departure ***

Shepard stepped out of the taxi in Sector Two looking for the Spectre Office.

The layout was similar to the embassy court of Sector Nine. It felt so familiar that at first, he strolled over toward the reception desk, looking around to see if there were any differences in the court that he could use to distinguish them. An asari sat behind the desk whose skin tone was an unusually deep blue, almost purple. But before he got within speaking distance, he saw another avina terminal holo.

He asked, "Avina, where is the Spectre office for Sector Two?"

"I'm sorry, the Council Spectre office is not a public–" The hologram seemed to jump to a slightly different pose. "My apologies, agent. The Spectre office is behind you, across the lake."

Shepard looked over his left shoulder; the **02** was clearly visible on the causeway island. In fact, if not for that, it would have been very easy to assume he was still in Sector Nine. A plaza that looked exactly like the one in front of the Consort's was visible on the other end of the causeway. _Well, maybe a little bigger_, he thought.

"Got it. Thanks, Avina."

The Avina terminal answered even as he turned away and started walking. "Goodbye, and thank you for using Avina. Please enjoy your visit to the Citadel."

# # #

**Citadel Council appoints Alliance Commander Stephen Shepard to be the first human Spectre**.

Paddy Amhearst, Editor-in-Chief of _Westerlund News_ happened to see the newsbit as it scrolled by on one of his feeds. He blinked once, raised his eyebrows, then reached out and touched it, scrolled it back and double-tapped it. His VI downloaded the announcement, extracting the information it knew he would care about, and displayed it on a new holographic tile.

**Alliance Commander Stephen Shepard, Executive Officer, SSV **_**Normandy**_

_**Normandy**_** was at Eden Prime during yesterday's attack, officers and crew to be awarded Legion of Merit citation.**

**Full Eden Prime analysis pending.**

**Leader of ad hoc resistance forces during Elysium attack, 2176 – awarded Star of Terra by PM Razhnikova**

**Married 2168, widowed 2176, no children.**

**Graduate of Alliance N7 program, 9 of 13 of 25 (rank/grad/start)**

**Only child of LT Dane Shepard (deceased) and CPT Hannah Shepard (nee Voorhees)**

"Desk, is this the same guy that the _Post_ just scooped us on with Fist?"

"Yes," the intelligence answered tersely.

Paddy was _not_ going to miss out on the next big story with the hero of Elysium and Eden Prime. "Shit. Where is he now?"

"Alliance SSV _Normandy_ docked at the Citadel today."

"Who's available on the Citadel to bag an interview with this Shepard?" He touched the holotile.

The VI answered instantly, "Yvonne, Jim, and Kalisah are on the Citadel. Kalisah is currently offline. Jim is still in the ICU at Jamilir hospital in Tayseri Ward. Yvonne is invisible."

Paddy put a hand to his forehead and sighed. "Shit shit shit. I pay you slackers a retainer so there's sure to be at least one of you available at all times. Kalisah, if you're in bed with that asari again, I will serve you your bloody head in thin slices."

Newsbots whispered from feeds in the background for a moment.

"Send text message?" asked his reception VI.

He looked up with alarm. "No," he snapped, "I'm just pissing about it." He thought for a moment, then smiled to himself. "But how about this:

"Yvonne, I want you to land a nice, polite interview with Commander Shepard, the new human Spectre. I need your touch on this. He's been big news before, but he's probably not going to go out of his way to give you any face time. It also sounds like he's a hot item again; the Post just broke the story on his bust of an organized crime group run by some guy using the name Fist. The Alliance and the Citadel Council are moving on it already.

"What I want you to do is get with him about this Spectre thing. Was it a result of his investigation? How long has he been working for the Council? Did they make him a Spectre so he can continue that work, and this Fist was just the tip of the iceberg?

"Let me know when you land an interview with him, I want to be there PVR, okay? Sign and send."

"Message sent."

Smiling, Paddy added, "Desk, send a message to Kalisah. Kalisah! Sorry you were offline, I assigned Yvonne to interview the new human Spectre. Hope you're back online soon. Cheers! Sign and send."

# # #

Shepard had crossed the causeway, turned left at the stairs; the plaza was much larger, extending out ahead of him to a sculpture garden.

The abstract pieces could have been Prothean, but the presence of asari figures left him confident that this was all fairly current.

The lifesized sculpture of an asari caught his eye; down on one knee, hand extended to something that wasn't shown, as if feeding birds.

His ARO put up a callout: **Matriarch ****Ci'taysha, First Asari Councillor.**

As he walked, he counted three asari, three turians, and two salarians. There was also a volus: **Jooza Trelb, primary author of the GalactiCredit System.**

The abstract pieces still seemed interesting, but he was pressed for time, and continued toward the wall at the end of the garden. A glowing rectangle on the ground next to the wall appeared via ARO.

**Spectre Office Access**, read the callout.

Out of curiosity, he toggled the callout off and back on again; without it, the rectangle looked like any other of the panels that comprised the surface.

Stepping onto it, he saw the Spectre insignia flash on his ARO as a notifier chimed quietly. "Spectre Office Access," said a VI from a well-hidden speaker, "please mind your step." The panel rose, slowly at first, and then accelerated to lift him to the top of the three-meter wall to another plaza. No one else seemed to be near enough to notice.

He crossed the plaza, looking to his left across the water at the vast asari embassy, and through the door on the far wall. The Spectre office was about 15 meters deep, and only four wide, with doors to adjacent rooms on either side. An asari, sitting at a desk that faced the door, looked up, then back at her holographic display, and up again at Shepard as he approached. "Commander Shepard. Welcome to the Spectres." She rose and stepped around the desk.

For a moment, reality seemed to be breaking down. Shepard had never seen anyone who actually looked like _Updater_'s Agent Kantha, and this was a dead ringer. While this asari's snug-fitting armor had no plating, allowing for maximum flexibility, it was covered with what looked like buckles on the arms and legs. **Biotic field magnifiers, prototype**, explained his ARO.

She had facial tattoos that reminded Shepard of the kind that turians wore, but they were a bright red; something like lightning bolts from the back of her cheekbones to the sides of her chin, and another set over her eyes that looked like eyebrows. Her right cheek was scarred with a single set of four claw marks; even with her charmingly pouty smile, it gave her a very intense look.

Even more attention-grabbing was her figure. She seemed to be walking a line straight toward him, and doing so caused her hips to sway attractively. He began to suspect that the producers or writers of _Updater_ had seen this asari and cast Agent Kantha to look as much like her as possible.

She was also raising her left hand to shoulder height and extending it toward him as she approached.

**Asari biotic salute**, explained a callout on his ARO,** Explanation: Sorry, I'm not biotic. But I'm very honored by your salute, Agent T'Iar.**

Shepard read the explanation aloud, bowed his head toward her.

**Gesture: Raise your right hand to meet hers.**

Mirroring his hand with her own, she brushed his fingertips, emitting a brief, faint burst of biotic energy; the tingling sensation it caused reminded him of what he'd felt the time he was shoulder-to-shoulder with Kaidan, who had used his biotics to lift an enemy charging their position behind a barricade. The asari's smile yanked him back to the present.

"The honor is mine, Commander," she said, "and congratulations to you. Your species has come a very long way in a very brief time." She lowered her hand. "We were told to expect you, but I don't think anyone thought you'd arrive _today_."

He nodded. "The Council wants me to get on task as soon as I can. My former captain sent me to the Spectre office at C-Sec, but the official there said this was a better choice. I'm hoping we'll be able to depart in a few hours."

"The Council will usually tell new agents to come here themselves." The asari Spectre looked to her left. "Perhaps they were in a hurry. But it's true, new Spectre agents – even non-asari ones – are offered Tarilli Lifetime by the Republics." She looked through the door to her left. "Are you familiar with Tarilli?"

**Tarilli TCI: Asari medical nanotech organization that supplies and researches personalized life sustainment hardware and NfoX hosting, primarily marketed on Thessia.**

"It sounds like an asari version of AbbEks."

Her own omnitool winked and displayed information; she glanced at it as she turned and walked through the large, open door. "M…I suppose they are similar in goal, but Tarilli has persisted across centuries." Shepard followed. "The scanner here is up-to-the-minute; in the event of an injury, if you can get to medical facilities that are reasonably current, your chances of survival and recovery are vastly improved."

Shepard recalled how Nihlus' suit VI had provided instructions for him to help the badly wounded Spectre, and nodded. "I'm all for that. What do you need from me?"

"Let me officially verify your identity," she raised her omnitool between them, "and all I need is about 80 minutes."

Shepard nodded agreement. "That works perfectly with my schedule; let's get started."

She continued to look at him intently over the omnitool's holographic interface, glancing down at it only once. As the technology on her forearm glowed and chittered, a hint of a smile played about her lips. "Ever hear of the Preservers, Commander?"

**Preservers: Asari NGO committed to saving species on the verge of extinction**, indicated his ARO.

"Not before now," he said, "Why?"

"M…it is complicated. Consider it a professional interest." She waved toward the door to her left again. "As you say, 'Let's get started.'"

The door opened quickly, and closed immediately behind them. It was not hard to guess why: They had stepped into an impressive armory. On the right, rows of shelves displayed hundreds of varying weapons. _And not just standard-issue stuff,_ Shepard noticed. Derringer-type sleeve pistols, auto-targeting BRLs, small arms that had been banned by treaty, omnitool attachments, and a number of seemingly random objects that Shepard was certain were not what they appeared to be.

As he focused on one, his ARO put a callout on it that stayed curiously blank.

T'Iar followed his gaze. "Yes, it looks like a normal tabletool, though an expensive one. But it is just a shell. That one is an area lifter, but we can put many surprising things in them, depending on your needs." On their left were a pair of exam platforms with a scan ring each; she stopped and turned to face him. "Perhaps we can continue to talk while the scans and analysis are performed. Would you mind removing your armor?"

_Stay on task_, he thought. _Keep it professional. This is not Agent Kantha and I am not being seduced._ He powered the armor down, and began removing his gauntlets. "Do you have an armor locker I can use?" He detatched and lifted the shoulder assembly over his head.

"You don't actually need it," the voluptuous blue alien nodded toward Shepard's right. "Feel free to use the second table."

His armor clanked, rustled, whirred and as he began to remove components. "Does this information stay with the Spectre office, or can any group that's part of the Tarilli network use it?"

"The cellular genomic evolution, history mapping, and metabolic vector information we obtain can be made part of your body, instantly readable by your VI, which can advise rescue personnel. Like an RFID device, but with encryption that only the Spectre office can read through. If you will permit it, this also allows us to know where you are if the information is accessed, which would allow us to provide assistance if you are captured by an enemy, and they attempt to repair you.

Shepard nodded. "I think I encountered that on Eden Prime. Spectre Nihlus Kyrick's suit advised me how to assist him."

"First responders interact with a different layer of the VI, though that was part of it," the asari had moved to a control array next to the scan ring and waved her hand through its holographic interface. As a larger group of controls extruded from the wall, she walked back over to Shepard, rendering her omnitool gauntlet again.

The plate sections of his armor now neatly arranged on the unused exam table, Shepard turned to the asari as he lit his omnitool and began to issue commands to the suit. "That's the heavy stuff. You want the bioarmor layer off too, I assume."

Agent T'Iar looked up from her omnitool. "If you would."

"Certainly." He touched the wrists of the jumpsuit together, and the underlayer relaxed visibly; he climbed out through the neck opening of the softer, 8mm black jumpsuit.

"It looks like your armor is current, but not state-of the-art. If you have another hour after we are finished with the scan, I can equip you with a new set and configure it."

Shepard paused, looked over his shoulder at her. "That would be…very welcome, Spectre T'Iar. Though I'd like to keep this armor, too."

"Of course." She nodded her acknowledgement as he leaned against the scanning platform, pulling the legs of the jumpsuit off one at a time. Studying the underlayer, she asked, "Is that the last layer?"

He pulled the sleeve up his arm. "Nothing under here but me and my SCI."

The asari paused, seemed to be reading from her own ARO. "It seems your Alliance still has many subcultures in it, with conflicting standards of conduct. And there are rites associated with…disrobing?"

"That's true…and not always for good reasons." He studied the exam platform.

"And I do not know which ones apply to you."

"This is my life we're talking about here," he answered. "If you need me as exposed as possible for maximum scan fidelity, I would have to be a fool to refuse."

There was a pause as the asari Spectre's VI clarified his meaning, displayed the results on her ARO.

"Then…if you would…disrobe completely." As she spoke, she turned to the control wall, opened a cabinet on it, and reached inside.

Shepard removed the carbon DCE undersuit – which looked like a faintly translucent dark grey leotard – his omnitool's flextronic sleeve, and second-skin undergarments: socks, gloves, and shorts. He was glad the climate was slightly cool.

The asari approached, carrying a small cup faintly-orangeish liquid, two small bottles, and what looked like a petri dish. She handed this to him first. "Apply this to your dermis, starting at the outer extremities." She set the other items on the platform nearby and walked to the other end of it. "I need to configure the brain scanner. You _are_ our first human." She sounded amused.

The dish held a sand-colored, slightly greasy paste. **Active Polymorphic Contrast**, explained his ARO.

He wiped a fingerful of it onto a hand, set the dish down and began to rub his hands together, covering them with it. It dissolved into his skin almost immediately. Perching on the warmed plastic surface of the scan platform, he rubbed more of the stuff on his feet, working his way up his legs, then arms, head, and neck. There was still plenty of it left, so he continued to cover his torso and back with it. "Am I supposed to use all of this?"

Spectre T'Iar looked up from the other end of the platform, saw him holding the small dish. "There should be more than you need," she explained, "And it's active, so you don't need to work too hard at application; just scrub until it doesn't feel gritty. As you might guess, the contrast will increase the scan fidelity, so you may want to make sure your face, head, and any other parts you are especially _fond of_ are treated." With a mischevious but private smile, she continued to configure the hemispherical array at her end of the platform.

"And what do I do with the other things?"

"Spray the pink bottle into your anus, the green bottle into your nose and ears, and then drink the orange liquid. When you are finished, please lie on the platform with your head at this end."

# # #

Kaidan's omnitool winked a notifier at him: **Event Scheduler Update from C. Pressly: **_**Normandy**_** departs at 2100. Report aboard by 2030. Tardiness will result in two weeks' pay penalty.**

"Hey, look at that, we're still in the Alliance." Ash toggled her omnitool back off and leaned forward on the table again. "Well Lieutenant, I'm impressed. You drink like you mean it."

Kaidan pushed his glass toward the glowing ring at the table's center. "And you drink like you _like_ it."

"Okay, my sisters will ask, so what else do you know about Commander Shepard?"

Kaidan looked away, frowning thoughtfully. "Well, since you're probably going to end up on the ground team a lot, you should know he doesn't like killing people."

Ash picked up her glass and looked at it thoughtfully. For a long time. "Nope. Don't s'pose I do, too."

"If you really wanna score some points, get some medical apps and stuff. Have the MFO print up an NNP sprayer, and use it if all else fails."

Ash was silent for a moment. "Like happened outside that…love club?"

Kaidan nodded. "'Zactly."

"What do they cost?"

"They don't. Alliance advises it, and the hardware is just…" He struggled to recall how much, then gave up. "Oh, I don't know. Maye a hundred grams. He made a deal to refill the stuff for free."

She looked puzzled.

Kaidan tried to explain, "Shepard did. With the CFS. Uh…Chakwas."

"No, I mean _why_?"

"His way of encouraging people to carry them."

More thinking. "What's in it for him?"

Kaidan sighed. "I think he's just trying to prevent any more death. When he can't do that, he saves what he can."

"You can't stop death. It's part of the way of things."

Kaidan nodded, and was silent for a moment. "Yeah…well…we might all encounter death, but we don't all react to it the same way."

"Aliens, too?"

"Aliens, too."

Ash looked resigned, shook her head. "Okay, what else?"

Kaidan picked up one of the shot glasses, peered through it as though it were a telescope. "What else. What else, what else…" He panned the distorted view around the room. "You can tell he's a spacer kid, even though he spent high school on Earth."

"Huh? What do you mean?"

"He may not look over his shoulder, but he'll always make sure the door closes behind him."

Ash shook her head. "So he's paranoid? With kinetic barriers, nobody worries about stuff like that anymore."

Kaidan grinned. "Kinetic barriers stop high-speed objects. Combat shielding is a kinetic barrier. Kiggs fields…I mean…um, Kiggs _generators_…create a field effect…thing…uh, an energy wall to keep air confined to a volume. But they're relatively new. Space travel used to be under the constant threat of explosive decompression. That's one of the reasons ships used to cost so much to build, and why those old museum pieces are so tough."

"And heavy," Ash added. "And slow."

"Right. But the habits of spacers were established already. It's like…" He paused, looked away in thought. "You ever been to Minnesota?"

"What? Me? No."

"Well, I have family near there, and one time we went across the border. Hmm… I don't remember why." Kaidan frowned to himself as he looked away momentarily. "Anyway, lots of folks there sound like they have a Scandinavian accent. Not because they're from Sweden or Denmark or Norway, and not even because their parents or grandparents were. But the accent persists even though they're all native speakers because they learned to speak in a community where that was the norm. It's kind of a linguistic time capsule."

Ash grinned lopsidedly. "Oo…a _linguistic time capsule_." She snorted. "You are just too damn smart for your own good, Lieutenant."

Kaidan shook his head. "Hey, _I_ don't make this stuff up."

Ash tilted her head, glanced toward the nearest door for a moment. "And you're saying…that's how you can tell Commander Shepard was raised on ships instead of on a planet? That's…" she shook her head, "That's…aw, I don't know what that is. It's crazy."

"Okay, maybe it is. But watch his eyes every time he walks through a doorway. 'Specially if there's no door to close."

"Hm. Maybe." Ash threw down another shot of slivovitsa, held up the glass and looked at it. "_Ouch_. That felt good."

Kaidan looked at the row of empty shot glasses and shook his head. "It's going to take us longer to get back to the ship."

"You think you can't drive a taxi when you're drunk?"

"I know it's harder to find the taxi door when I'm drunk."

"You want a shot of Nectar 'fore we head back?"

The biotic reached into a shirt pocket and produced two small packets. "Got one...uh..._two_ on the way in."

"And you're responsible, too?" As shook her head. "

# # #

Reclining on the platform, Shepard could just see the asari's face over the controls. "What do we do now?"

She did technical things at the console, which blipped and chimed in response, and then looked up from the controls. "And now we wait." She made adjustments to the control console that had extruded from the wall. "It will probably take between seven and fifteen minutes for the contrast to spread out evenly though your anatomy."

Shepard could feel himself trying not to stare, but his expression must have set off the asari's cultural awareness VI. She tilted her head to one side. "You seem to have something unsaid. What is it?"

"Have you…ever heard of a human trideo show called _Updater_?"

Her faint sigh was one of patient indulgence; she looked away and closed her eyes briefly. "Commander, do you think I could _not_ have?"

"I'm sorry. I suppose you get that a lot; you look so much like the actor they cast in the role. I wasn't sure if the producers and writers of the show did that because they saw you and actually cast you, or if they just were inspired and found someone who looks like you."

"Are you a fan?"

He looked away guiltily. "I don't think I've even watched an entire episode. I only knew _of_ it because of the advertising. But one of my marines is a die-hard fan."

She seemed resigned. "I have almost 500 years, over 200 of them as a Spectre. I'm at least partly responsible for humans being on the Citadel instead of extinct. The reason I'm assigned _here_ is because the showwriters have no restraint. I haven't decided whether to kiss them or kill them: On the one hand, I can't show my face in public without being mobbed by sex-starved _children_. On the other, I haven't killed anyone in over three years."

"It sounds like that's a good news/bad news joke, but I don't know which is which."

The Spectre looked at him quizzically as her VI sorted out what that meant and explained it to her. "Depends on who it is. You ever had somone in your sights that you let go, and then later wished you'd taken the shot?"

"I've had more that I didn't want to kill. I've gotten good at wounding instead."

"Then allow me to suggest you become less compassionate. Focus on your goal. This isn't about the value of the individual. It's about the collective needs of the galactic trillions." She leaned back in the seat. "Planets, and even whole civilizations can be saved or obliterated because of our actions." A shrug. "And I can't do this work until that show is dead and gone."

"At least you have the option to consider it in such a long view. For me, it'd probably be a career-ender."

"Long view?" She looked past him at the weapons racks. "In the long view, I'll be dead."

** C. Pressly: The rest of the CHA contractors have disembarked. Captain Anderson said to expect this. This message is autosent from 's VI.**

Out of habit, Shepard touched his left index finger to his thumb; from the other exam platform, the omnitool warbled a sad little squeak. **Low-bandwidth range from tool**, explained his ARO. He looked to where it was in relation to himself.

"Hm. I just got a message from my XO. Will it mess up the scan if I answer him?"

Agent T'Iar looked to her left at a display. "No. The swarm is still calibrating. It looks like you have another…ah…a hundred seconds."

He gestured again, and subvocalized, _Sounds like a good thing. Are they going to be able to get off the ship in time?_

There was a pause as Pressly read the rest of the string.

**C. Pressly****: No problem, Commmander. Half of 'em were packed and ready to go when we docked. I think the Captain. Anderson told them we were going to Phase Three.**

_Will this let us berth the quarian contractor?_

**C. Pressly****: I suppose so, sir. I'm a little concerned about security, though. Two of the "extra" berths are with the Engineering team. They might talk tech without thinking about it.**

_Thinking about what?_

**C. Pressly****: The quarian. They might forget they're not in a secure environment anymore. A better choice for contractor berthing might be in the forward bunks.**

Shepard frowned to himself. With all the technology of Tali's environment suit, Shepard could understand why Pressly might think of the quarian as a thing, an "it" instead of a "her," but was surprised he would say it aloud.

_Maybe that's not how he meant it._

He subvocalized, _How many berths are available there?_

**C. Pressly: Three. Five if you count the fold-outs.**

_Okay, put her there for now, but put a reminder on my Desk. I may want to reconsider that later._

"The network is complete and stable," Agent T'Iar said. "I can start the scan when you are ready."

"Do I need to lie still? Or not talk? Anything like that?"

**C. Pressly: Will do, sir.**

"You should stay on the platform, and lie generally still," T'Iar replied. The platform will use gravity planing to stress your tissues, which may feel like acceleration when you are aboard a ship."

Shepard studied the hemisphere of sensors around his head, forming a hemisphere almost a meter across. "Then I'm probably as ready as I'm going to be. Victor Indigo, hold all inputs until I put my omnitool back on."

Era T'Iar nodded and looked down as she touched the control; it chwirkled as she looked back up. A thin green band that ran around the inside of the encircling torus glowed brightly as it began to slide toward Shepard's feet.

# # #

The door opened in front of them.

"This is the hangar," Rosamund waved a hand into the largest single space aboard the ship. "It looks like they just loaded the new landing vehicle."

"A Rocketdyne-BDS M35 Mako," Tali breathed. "Keelah, it's so new, the armor hasn't even finished curing. I can smell the diamond composite from here. They must have _just_ finished it."

Roz turned with a huge grin. "I never thought of that. I'll bet your suit gives you lots of super-powers like that."

Tali held a finger to the front of her mask as her VI prompted her with a graphic and an explanation: **Human gesture for silence or secrecy.** "It's true…but don't make a big deal out of it. It upsets some people because they think crazy things like…I can tell what they're thinking, or I know what they do when they're alone."

"Your secret's safe with me," Roz winked. "Like I said, best not to touch anything, at least not yet. But I'll bet you're just dying to. We can go look, though."

Tali's VI and sensors covered the scene before her with callouts and technical information, but she didn't move from the elevator. "Can we see the engines?"

Roz looked quickly around the hangar. "I keep forgetting about you and engines. Mmh…now might be a good time, with the engineering contractors getting off the ship. Maybe they won't notice us." She gestured for Tali to follow her as she turned to her right and then headed aft.

The accessway ended in a door marked **ENGINEERING – DRIVE CORE – HAZARD 03, 04, 06**. It opened for Roz. Standing just on the other side was Engineering Chief Adams.

Roz saluted. "Sir."

"Hey." Adams returned the salute and started to walk past, but stopped. "Who's this?"

"New Contractor. The Commander just handed her off to me; I'm giving her the tour."

Adams looked over his shoulder into the Engine Room. "Uh…well, okay. But be careful. And don't bother Zhang, he's been having hysterics now that CHA pulled the last of their people. I think he'll be fine, but he's not so sure."

"What's the problem?" Tali took a step forward. "Maybe we can help."

Adams looked uncertain. "I don't want him any more emotional than he is. Probably best not to try to help him yet. You especially don't want to make him think he doesn't know it all."

"We'll stay out of his way, sir." Roz said.

"I'll be right back anyway." Adams stepped past them. "You shouldn't be able to get into too much trouble by then," he chuckled under his breath.

# # #

Garrus stood at the door to his efficiency apartment, surveying its now-bare walls and floor. His collection of personal items was largely digital or digitized; his one civilian outfit was already rolled neatly in his sandwich pack. After almost six years in C-Sec, it seemed like he had little to show for it but memories, and too many of them were bad.

Listening to his father instead of accepting the offer from the Spectre Office, the bureaucratic snafu that resulted in his missed promotion, the death of the blindingly intelligent and devastatingly gorgeous Vindai Helenus who had taken a bullet for _him_, and most recently, the still-unresolved debacle with "Doctor Hart." After all that had gone so desperately wrong in his career at C-Sec, Garrus could only curse his own insensitivity to human irrationality for this latest blunder.

It all just ate at him.

But _by his family's spirit_, he would _not_ miss this opportunity to make it all worthwhile: join the human Spectre, bring the traitorous Saren down hard and fast. And _publicly_.

Of course, his father's reaction would be, "I told you Spectres were dangerous."

Garrus tilted his head up to a horizon he could not see; to anyone standing there, he gave the impression of looking into the future, hoping for vindication. Perhaps that would be enough.

A quick check of his omnitool showed that Commander Shepard was still aboard the station.

_No time to waste._

He turned on his heel and walked away without looking back.

# # #

Getting outfitted with the latest armor and omnitool was good, and being able to talk with an asari who had spent more time as a Spectre than he had even been breathing had been both interesting and informative, but it had all taken more time than Shepard had expected. He was glad to be in a taxi headed directly to the C-Sec dock access. The last thing he needed was to have threatened everyone else with getting fined two week's pay for tardiness and then show up late himself.

The taxi settled gently on the landing marker, the door sprang open.

And there was a turian in his face.

Displa**iD** quickly identified him: **Vakarian, Garrus - Citadel Security Officer: Detective. Off Duty.**

"Commander Shepard, I need to talk to you."

"Detective," Shepard said. "Is there a problem?"

"If there is a problem, Commander, it is mine and not yours." As he spoke, Vakarian stepped back to allow Shepard to exit the taxi. "But first, I should congratulate you on being made a Spectre. It's a notable achievement for anyone, but for you especially as the first _human_."

"I appreciate that, Detective…"

Garrus didn't let him finish, "I guess it took someone like you to get the Council to see Saren for what he really is: A traitor. I resigned from C-Sec after the Council ignored my investigation, I'm just sick of all the politics." He slashed a claw to one side.

"Are you sure that's the right thing to do? You can surely do more _in_ C-Sec than you can from outside of it."

"Not with the Council pulling strings in C-Sec and Saren manipulating _them_," Garrus snapped, "And…all right, I haven't actually resigned yet; I was about to take a Leave of Absence."

Shepard's ARO tagged some of the plates on the turian's face and added, **Unconscious indicators of sincerity, intensity, possibly desperation.**

Garrus folded his arms. "When we were chasing Fist as a way of getting to Saren, I told you that I wanted to help you take down Saren. But you were focused on Fist. I was…concerned that you didn't seem interested in my offer at the time." He held up his left arm, illuminating his omnitool briefly, "I've been reminded that humans tend to prioritize short-term goals first. So I wanted to say this to you directly: You're the only one who seems to be doing anything about Saren _and getting some traction_. I can do so much more with you than stuck here on my own. Let me come with you."

Shepard didn't have time to think of a reply before the sound of heavy feet made him turn.

"Hey Shepard! Don't waste your time with _him_, you'll need some serious muscle to take down Saren!" Wrex stomped to a halt next to them, gave Garrus a look of distaste. "You're still after that turian, right?"

"I'm sorry, I don't have time for this," Shepard held up a hand to each of them, but looked at Wrex. "And I _really_ don't need any more problems."

"I don't cause problems, I solve them," Wrex waved his head toward Garrus. "Besides, you don't need a turian shooting you in the back. That turian Saren is the problem here. Turians are always the problem."

**Event Scheduler: Proceed to dock lift**, warned Shepard's ARO.

Garrus rounded on Wrex, "All turians are not the same. I'm not like Saren."

Wrex leaned menacingly toward Garrus. "You're more like Saren than I am, _turian_."

Shepard stepped to his right, around the argument and away from the krogan. _How do I get rid of these two? I'm about to be late to my own departure._ He pointed across the atrium. "I'm getting on _that_ lift right now. You each have one minute to sell me on why I need you along." He started walking toward the lift.

Wrex turned and followed. "That's easy. You don't want to turn down help fighting Saren. No one willing to fight him will be inexpensive."

Garrus had turned and fallen in on Shepard's right. "Don't confuse _crazy and willing_ with _capable and motivated_. I have six years with C-Sec, and a network of intelligence contacts in the Home Guard. I also have access to the STG through personal contacts, and I'm a Class-IV sniper scout with Crossed Swords." He stepped into the lift and held the **Door Open** icon. "And I have my own weapons."

"Heh," Wrex snorted as he stepped into the elevator behind Shepard. "I'm a battlemaster with centuries of real-world combat experience in environments that would kill _you_ just standing in them." The krogan glared at the C-Sec detective. "Not the games _you_ play to earn your little merit badges."

"You're both assuming I have to recruit a ground team." Shepard gestured at the controls; the door hissed shut and the lift began its ascent. "I don't. I have a small but state-of-the-art frigate with a trained Alliance crew, including a squad of Marines. The same team that was on the ground at Eden Prime."

"And you're going after Saren Arterius, a legendary turian Spectre that _I've_ been building a case against for years," Garrus raised his left forearm with its omnitool interface aglow. "I have C-Sec records that were classified after Saren was officially implicated, but before the Council made them go away. If you have time to analyze them, you can compile a dossier on him that you won't find anywhere else. _Good_ intel on a _bad _guy."

Wrex turned aside with a sneer. "And when you find him, do you know how long it'll take him to put an extra hole in your empty head? Saren is tough and smart; assuming you can outsmart him, you'd better be able to out-_tough_ him." Moving almost too fast to follow, he drew his grenade-launching assault rifle and 15-kilo shotgun, visibly waving the barrel of the shotgun past Garrus as he turned to address Shepard. "You'll be glad to have me _and my little friends_ along." He turned his head slightly and added, "Amateur."

Shepard remembered that Saren was allied with the geth, and there were untold numbers of them; the quarian might be valuable, but was not a battle-hardened veteran. _Never forget this,_ Anderson had told him, _we are the greenest of green beans at this table. They all know more than we do, have been here longer, and know how things work._ He held up his hands toward the two aliens, "Alright, stop."

Both looked away from each other and toward him.

"Here's one problem I have: Until I read up on what a Spectre gets budgeted for operations, I don't have anything to pay you. Of course, having you along for the ride would present no unacceptable burden," he nodded toward Garrus, "but until I hear from Finance, you'll have to do this RBR." He gestured for a VI query and subvocalized, _Show me a contractor pay table._

Garrus was too keenly aware of Wrex to say anything aloud, but he thought, _You'll probably like the Spectre expensing arrangement, and it should let you pay us well enough. This is a good secret to keep._

Shepard continued, "But worse, you two are a toxic mix. From what I've seen so far, you have cultural _and_ personal issues. Clearly I can't have both of you in the same room."

"You're not supposed to take _both_ of us," Wrex grumbled.

Garrus had encountered this problem before. "Then how about this: At the first problem, you get rid of whoever's causing problems. And _you_ get to decide what constitutes a problem."

Shepard raised an eyebrow. "That's always been understood. My ship, my rules. But it could be bad for you if I decide to do so while we're light years from a mass relay."

"I'm not stupid," Wrex said, "You just want a truce." He turned toward Garrus, one hand out. "I offer you my hand as an ally. If you take it, you are safe while I live."

Garrus suddenly had a 20-cm knife in his claw – there had barely been time to see him draw it from his boot – and he offered the handle toward Wrex. "And I offer you my blade. My allies are your allies."

Neither moved as each tried to stare the other down.

Shepard managed to keep from smiling as he stood looking at the two of them, squared off with offers of peace, and neither willing to accept what was offered. "One of you is gonna have to go first, you know."

"If you take it and reneg, you had better be sure I am _very dead_," Wrex whisper-growled.

Garrus read the prompt from his holographic monocle, "I accept your hand, and declare myself friend to clan Urdnot." He traded the knife to his other claw, and gripped Wrex's massive right hand with his own.

Wrex shook the turian's claw cursorily, nodding once as he flicked the turian claw away. He found the blade's handle proferred again. He took it with his left hand. "And I…uh…accept your allies and blade as my own."

Mentally, Garrus sighed. _A krogan blade would probably be useless anyway_, he thought. Having the replacement licencing to fabricate another, he realized it was no major loss.

Each took a small step back as the elevator door grumbled open, revealing the docking bay. Against the spectacular background of deep space, _Normandy_ gleamed in the docking bay lights. Service crews were just finishing the pullback of cranes and supply lines. Shepard studied the ARO-displayed contractor pay table and realized he would stay within budget even if he had to pay six contractors, and there would probably be other occasions to uninvite them.

Wrex was examining the blade. "Hm. Balanced for throwing, but meant for _small hands_," he smirked. "Makes a nice toothpick, though."

"Right, then." Shepard nodded once. "I take it you're both okay with the going rate." He didn't smile, but confidently played his high card, "But we're leaving _right now_. If you aren't carrying everything you need to bring, then you have missed this boat."

Garrus reached down and hefted to his shoulder the sandwich pack he had been carrying instead of wearing. "Here's my life," he said. "I'm Full Commit." He looked meaningfully at the krogan.

Wrex sniffed. "I am _krogan_," he said. "I've lived out of my own hump for _years at a time_."

_Great_, Shepard thought. He gestured for 6x acceleration.

The extra time to think wasn't enough. He had expected – even looked forward to – the opportunity to board his first command with some sense of occasion, and it hadn't involved dragging along two squabbling aliens. _I'll have to just walk them aboard._ He gestured for RTM, subvocalized again, _Talitha Draven, I have another pair of contractors for you and Roz to handle. I'm coming aboard immediately. Please meet me at the forward airlock._

To his surprise, the response came back immediately. **T. Draven: Coming up from the mess, sir. Be right there.**

Though feeling resigned, he moved decisively, stepping between the two aliens and out of the lift. "Right, then. Let's go."

# # #

Shepard strode along the docking arm, aware that cameras feeds on him were being watched by the crew, CTC, news media, Alliance Command, his mother…_and for all I know, Mrs. Jordan, my kindergarten teacher_, he thought. _I'd better do 'em proud._

They stopped in front of the airlock's inner door; the outer door rumbled into place behind them. "Decontamination in progress," said the Boatswain VI.

Wrex looked around he oversized airlock. "Are we gonna have to do this every time we go aboard?"

"Just doing our part to prevent the spread of infectious diseases," Garrus said, "I would think we can agree on _that_ being a good idea."

Wrex turned slowly and seemed to be about to say something, but Garrus ignored him.

As the decon arm hummed back and forth, Shepard watched the datastream on the left side of his ARO. The crew was present and accounted for, stations were crewed, system status lights were switching to green. Major repairs had been made, smaller ones would be performed while underway. Supplies were secure, departure was still on schedule.

The inner door opened; Talitha Draven was there, once again wearing a salute. Her eyes widened. "Uh…welcome aboard…sir." She looked startled to see the turian and krogan, but if she had any thoughts, she did not speak them.

Shepard glanced to one side and stuck a thumb over his shoulder. "You handled the quarian so well, I thought I'd throw a bigger challenge your way."

Draven's holographic monocle automatically switched from scrolling text to callouts. "Yes, sir. Um…a _bigger_ challenge all right."

Wrex leaned forward slowly. "Boo," he teased.

Talitha had looked nervous at first, but now seemed to get a sense of the play. Her face lit slowly. "Boo," she answered with a grin.

Garrus held up a single claw to shoulder height. "Careful, you'll scare him. He'll probably start to cry. And you _don't_ want that."

The smallish human addressed her CO, "Okay, sir. I think I've got this."

Shepard stepped out of the airlock. "Good. Carry on."

Her voice dropped away as Shepard headed aft, "Welcome aboard _Normandy_. I'm Warrant Officer Talitha Draven, and my twin and I will be introducing you to the ship and crew over the next few days. You may call me Tal…"

On his way, Shepard saw Pressly standing next to the starboard Comm station, omnitool aglow, and looking like he was on three calls at once.

"You said AllIntComNet is currently two tee high," he said to whoever it was he was speaking to, "I saw that this morning myself. It's not bad, but you say it's been there for an hour…"

Shepard gestured for RTM, _We don't need to leave immediately; if you need time, just say._

Pressly looked up, raised a hand to shoulder height, and shook his head. Shepard took it that his XO had the situation under conrol and kept walking.

_Five minutes today won't make a difference trying to find Saren,_ he thought. _I can take the time to give my first orders with all the trimmings._

Having not yet transferred his personal effects to the Captain's cabin, he went his locker on the middeck, changed into his dress whites. As he slipped on the jacket, affixed decorations, and verified everything was in order, he noticed the last of the critical systems switch from yellow to green on his ARO. It was at once gratifying and slightly overwhelming to realize that everyone aboard was doing their level best to depart on schedule; he would probably never know what sort of problems had been overcome or kludged to make it possible.

But he also noticed that everyone in the mess – the off-duty crew – was watching the holographic displays on the back wall that showed external cameras, the bridgecam forward, the dock view, and VI-generated Alliance news about the ship. The muted buzz of quiet conversation danced around the room.

And _no one_ had looked at him after he had come down the ladder. Having made no eye contact, he had not been saluted, but the privacy he was being granted now was not the usual courtesy offered by people who have to share a confined space. This was something else, a deference to the new CO, an awareness that there was more at stake here than they were being told.

He pulled down on the jacket front one last time to flatten it out, and then walked very deliberately to the aft end of the mess. When he turned his head to speak, all eyes were already on him, but he kept walking. "Stand by for an announcement," he said.

From the top of the ladder, the walk forward seemed like one of the longest of his life. Mouth closed, he smiled confidently at everyone who looked up as he passed, not wanting to disturb the crew, but to assure them, even inspire them if he could, that this was all as it should be.

When he stepped onto the bridge, Joker turned immediately. He looked unhappy. "Heard what happened to Captain Anderson," he shook his head. "Survives a hundred battles to get shot down by backroom politics. Just watch your back, Commander. Things go fubar on this mission, _you're_ next on their chopping block."

Shepard stopped short of the Flight Officer's chair, looked at the empty station to the left of the pilot, _his_ seat, listening to the electronic notification squeaks and chirps around him, the faint techochatter from Ops Alley. "Captain Anderson should be here. It's like I'm stealing the ship from him."

"Yeah, the Captain got screwed, but it's not like _you_ could have stopped it; no one's blaming you…except _you_. Uh…_sir_." He seemed momentarily distracted with his console. "Crew's behind you, hundred percent," he said. He toggled the intercom. "CHENG, Flight. Poppa is in the house. MEFG to IRC."

"Flight, Ops," said the intercom, "Handover complete, arms ready to retract."

Another voice came from the console. "Flight, Engineering. Ball is floating. Full delta vee at your discretion."

"Sinks are clean, core at 92 percent," Pressly announced from the Nav station. "We're cleared to undock."

"Okay, that's it," Joker said. He poked at the holographic intercom key, which brightened to red in response. "Attention, all hands. Final preparations for departure and relay jump." His voice reverberated from aft. The level of technical chatter rose noticeably in Ops Alley.

Joker looked over his shoulder at the Commander. "Intercom's still open," he said quietly. "If you've got anything to say to the crew, now's the time."

The Commander leaned forward, raised his voice as he spoke toward the pickup, "This is Commander Shepard speaking. We have our orders: Find Saren before he finds the Conduit. I won't lie to you, team: This mission isn't going to be easy.

"This began with an attack on a human colony. You were all there, you all saw the destruction, you saw the bodies. We saw what Saren did. But we know he won't stop there; his geth armies aren't going to stay on the fringes of Citadel space. We don't know where he's gone, and we've got the whole galaxy to find him in. This is just the sort o mission humans need to show the Council what we can do.

"For too long our species has stood apart from the others. We've been the newcomers, so no one asked or expected much of us. Now it's time for us to step up and make a difference; to do our part for the rest of the galaxy. Time to show them what humans are made of. This is the most important mission any of us have ever been on.

"Our enemy knows we're coming. When we go into the Traverse, Saren's followers will be waiting for us. But we'll be ready for them, too. Humanity needs to do this. Not just for our own sake, but for the sake of every species in Citadel space. Wherever Saren goes, we'll follow. Wherever he searches for the Conduit, we'll be there. If we have to hunt him to the ends of the galaxy, we'll bring him to justice."

He stood straighter, spoke louder, "Captain Anderson specifically requested each and every one of you because you're the best people he's worked with over his career, the best crew in the Alliance. I am both honored to be serving with you, and confident that we can get the job done, and do it honorably.

"So let's go do it." He nodded with finality.

Joker toggled the intercom off, looked up and almost smiled. "Well said, Commander. Captain would be proud."

Shepard looked left at "his" station one last time. "Not if we don't stop Saren." He folded his arms across his chest, looking forward. "Mister Pressly, research and design a course for the Serrice University's archaeological expedition site. Coordinate with Flight. Mister Moreau, take us out. Relay to Artemis Tau. Best speed."

*** Glossary ***

AbbEks: Human Health Extension R&amp;D group, part of Google's Calico family of companies.

AllIntComNet: Alliance Interstallar Communications Network

ARO: Augmented Reality Overlay

BRL: Backpack Rocket Launcher

CFS: Chief Flight Surgeon

CHA: Cord-Hislop Aerospace

CHENG: CHief of ENGineering

CO: Commanding Officer

DCE: Distributed Computing Environment, a VDI wherein storage and processing share a substrate. Typically able to withstand loss of 50% of substrate before adversely affecting data integrity.

fubar: slang acronym for Fouled Up Beyond All Recognition

IRC: Interstellar Relay Charge, a level and distribution of charge

MEFG: Mass Effect Field Generator

NfoX: Information Exchange; a technology/protocol used by research organizations and universities for scientific research data collection and dissemination. Pioneered on Thessia, popularized in the Alliance by Husseinomica (part of the Venus Project 2.0) after the Prothean discovery on Mars, acquired by Google in 2073.

NGO: Non-Governmental Organization

RBR: Room, Board, and Reputation

Rocketdyne-BDS: Rocketdyne was founded by North American Aviation in 1955, bought and sold a dozen times until the Prothean ruins on Mars were discovered. After rights to the mass-effect drive were licensed from the UN, Rocketdyne became very successful selling and licensing the drive technologies, at which point it bought Boeing Defense and Space Systems (ironically, a company that had at one time owned Rocketdyne.)

RFID: Radio Frequency Identification

SCI: subcutaneous interface. Embedded nanotech which allows the nervous system of a user so equipped to interact directly with electronics via an omnitool. Typical of technology professionals, and people who use haptic interfaces daily. Uses realtime-engineered RNA to remain invisible to the autoimmune system.

snafu: slang acronym for Situation Normal: All Fouled Up

TCI: Thessian Collective Interest; analogous to a persistent, evolving, adhocratic corporation, but with an asari "spin." It exists to serve the interests of all within its sphere of influence, utilizing VI clusters to track the evolution of those interests, and develop multiple plans of action – with recommendations and implications – for the voting members to choose from.

_Updater_: an action/adventure/sexploitation vid about an asari Spectre. Though popular among humans, it has propagated a number of misconceptions, much to the annoyance of asari – and Spectres – everywhere.

VDI: Virtualized Data Infrastructure


	26. Chapter 26: Matriarch Benezia

A/N: Lots of stuff to set up for the Therum landing; it took extra brain power and a lot of wasted (thrown away) writing.

*** Matriarch Benezia ***

Joker gestured for his console's SVS Mode. "Aye Aye sir." His seat rose and tipped forward, isolating him from the ship's gravitational plane as the ship lurched subtly. "Clamps are detached and retracting." He could see around the ship in all directions, and smiled to himself. "We are free to maneuver."

"I'll be…moving into my quarters," Shepard turned and moved aft. "Message me if anyone needs anything." _That's what Captain Anderson always said_, he thought.

"Taking us out," Joker said for the flight recorder, "Maneuvering astern; accelerating to eight meters per second." Outside the viewports, the station dock began to slide silently away from them.

"_Normandy_, Alliance Control. You are cleared to relay exit corridor Bravo," said the comm speaker.

"Cleared to corridor Bravo," echoed Joker. "Thank you, Alliance control." With careful movements of his hands, he began to execute a two-axis rotation before being completely clear of the dock, pitching up and yawing right as the ship slid astern. His wireframe view of the dock glowed red; it would set off an alarm on the traffic controller's PVR.

The console speaker continued, "_Normandy_, Alliance Control. You are not clear of the facility. Please correct your course."

Joker grinned; his view of the in-corridor wireframe switched from red to green as _Normandy_'s prow slid clear of the Kiggs field. "Alliance control, _Normandy_. Did not receive your last. Please repeat?"

Knowing that there would now be nothing to report or correct, Joker held his course, simultaneously aiming his index finger toward where he knew Kaidan would be sitting at the FCO station. "Got 'em. You owe me ten."

Kaidan checked out his viewports. "Hm. Maybe. If you don't get a Field Board."

Joker ratcheted his grin up another notch. "Pffyeah. They had their chance. First they have to _find_ me." He looked around his SRS view, grinned to himself at how powerful it made him feel, and nudged the control that sent additional milliwatts of power down each strand in the the array of transposer circuits.

The resulting charge was distributed precisely across the thousands of element zero pellets arranged in _Normandy_'s drive core, which bent spacetime just enough to reduce the realized mass of the entire starship to less than a kilogram. Shipboard gravity wavered as the MEFGs responded to Joker's commands.

Fuel accelerators in nacelles Two and Three fired aft, igniter rings burning in neon hues, turning the result into tons of thrust on a vehicle that now had the mass of a can of beer. Sensors and automation flashed data to the ship's main computers, which calculated the resulting effect on the ship and sent commands adjusting the pitch of the gravitational plane forward in an accurate-to-eight-places battle against the vector so that loose items were not hurled aft. The main drive accelerated _Normandy_ gracefully toward the Citadel Relay…

…at 3.4 kilometers per second.

Joker continued, "Then they have to _catch_ me."

Kaidan just looked at his console again, smiled and shook his head.

Instrument noises competed softly with the whir and hum of the engines.

"Well what do you know about that?" Pressley looked up from the results of the VI's inquiry. "Serrice University just sent the location and contact information about the dig site." Looking up from his console, he added, "_Just now_. And that was…ten minutes ago we sent the RFI?" He tapped and swiped his way through the interface for a few seconds. "Heh. Well, whatever. Course design complete and in your tray, Flight." He turned his head left, looking forward with a chuckle. "Never seen a reply come back from an asari organization so fast."

"Maybe because we have a Council Spectre on board now," Kaidan speculated.

His console interrupted, "Fire Control, Gunnery. Underwing cannons secured for jump."

"Thank you, Gunnery." Kaidan touched a holographic key, confirmed the report. "FCO declares Go For Jump."

Pressley shrugged agreement. "Hm…maybe."

**# # #**

Though still unsure what had prompted her to summon all the contractors to kill Shepard at once, Benezia knew it was the mistake of an amateur; she would not make it again. The ensuing chaos had reduced what should have been a superior force to a flurry of money-crazed mercenaries, firing on each other to claim the bounty. She had suspicions about who had started it, but they were now irrelevant.

Since realizing her mistake, Benezia had been researching which of their contractors were still alive, sending self-destruct commands to the custom-built ePET devices of those that didn't respond. The handheld communicators had obediently melted themselves harmlessly into unrecognizable slag. She kept working the console even after finishing her analysis and damage control so she would not have to bear the brunt of Saren's reaction.

"We still have two contractors on the Citadel," she said gravely. "Frizbee and Choobik-Ahz have responded."

The turian's armor rustled as he turned abruptly. "Is that all?"

"So far."

Saren made a grinding sound.

Benezia pressed on with a question to which she well knew the answer, "Have you integrated the message from the beacon?"

"Of course not. The asari are the only species that was remotely civilized when it was encoded." He turned away again. "I will not risk your life for that, and your acolytes are too young to be capable."

_True_, Benezia realized. _Not one of them is even as old as…_

"Liara," she said aloud.

Saren looked up. "What?"

"Liara. My youngest. I raised her myself; she shares much of my tishar…my spirit-of-training. She could accomplish this."

Saren's onboard VI looked up Benezia's daughter, converted her age to something meaningful to him, displayed it on his ARA. "Mmmh. Still very young for an asari."

"It is enough, and I am confident in her ability to integrate." Benezia looked across the cabin severely. "We have few other choices." She lit another tile, pulled information to it, pruned out options. "She is on a solo dig in the Artemis Tau cluster. We can have geth there within hours; she could be here tomorrow morning."

"And then what? We wait for Stockholm syndrome to set in? She would not help us after being kidnapped, not even if we had time to make her understand the billions of lives at stake."

The asari frowned in thought. "Wait…Dr. Kulkarni told me recently that he can reliably indoctrinate in a matter of days."

"Kulkarni?" Saren shook his head. "No. He has become…unreliable." The scarred turian rose from his seat, paced the length of the Musky's cabin toward the cockpit. "I have a new technical lead for that operation, an asari. Rana Thanoptis, from Malaven University on Ilium. Still, a low-level indoctrination might be sufficient." Claws behind his back, he ground his talons against each other as he paced. "There's no way we can use the cipher first, buy some more time?"

"Every receiver first enciphered befouls the message. We've even tested this on other asari." Benezia's frown deepened as she recalled the disorientation that never seemed completely gone. _Or maybe it was the indoctrination?_ Something inside her mind clamped down hard and fast; it was almost as if the earlier thought had been random. She looked up at Saren again.

"Then your daughter will have to do." The turian looked down and away in thought. "Send Grodis. He should be able to locate and acquire her."

The asari frowned. "Grodis? The degenophaged krogan? I do not think you appreciate the site Liara is exploring. It was a prison, and is renowned for its examples of working technology. Its sturdiness is fortresslike. And she will know it well, know its secrets, and be able to exploit them."

"What are you saying?"

"We need the geth. They will be able to use the technology immediately, use it against her." She sneered, "Your krogan will just try to eat it."

"And you know so much about this site because…?"

"Because my daughter is a public figure. An _obscure_ scientist, but hardly a secretive one. She has published on this site four times since she began working it. I know almost as much as she does about it."

Saren did not like the feeling that Benezia knew something she was keeping from him, considered how to regain control of the situation. "How many geth will Grodis need?"

"How many geth can Grodis take? They are tools, like ammunition. Use them so."

"Sovereign barely tolerates the geth. What do you see in them?"

"They are technically proficient, while the krogan is not. They can produce troops on demand, the krogan are organic, born ignorant, requiring months to become even barely combat-ready. The geth can overwhelm her with sheer numbers without needlessly damaging her."

"Their only job is to deliver her to our base on Virmire."

"And they will be facing _my daughter_. She will probably be working alone, and will have much automation at her command. VIs for every imaginable task, particularly security. I taught her well. She will know when anything moves from orbit that could be a threat. At close range, she is also a proficient biotic."

Saren sat at his cabin desk again. "Then _you_ direct this operation. Contact Grodis, send him with geth if you must. But get your daughter to Thanoptis."

Benezia nodded as Saren turned away. "Of course."

She almost didn't notice the moisture of a tear until it was halfway down her cheek.

She brushed it away.

# # #

Since being awarded her doctorate at the remarkably young age of 61, Liara T'Soni had wasted little time on anything but the Protheans. Thirty-nine field seasons at thirteen Prothean sites, both well-established and recently-discovered, had established her reputation, and her mentor, the noteworthy Shanda Hannell, continued to be a close contact and fellow researcher.

The universities' dual acceptance of their proposal to investigate the Prothean ruins on Therum again had been both a surprise and a disappointment; Liara had not heard from Professor Hannell since their respective universities had co-sponsored the 2181 "dig" at Artemis Tau, Knossos, Therum site 121, usually referred to as AT-K/T121. Their papers, written independently but published jointly, had both offered significant evidence that the Protheans had undergone a major change in culture during their final three centuries. Both investigators had – in their jointly-written epilogue – taken the Prothean research community to task for assuming this was necessarily a _cause_ of their downfall, rather than an _effect_. It was at once disheartening to study, and thrilling to find significant evidence that pointed in this direction.

Still, they had not finished their research of the site. There was almost certainly more yet to discover.

The disappointment had come with the invitation for another expedition to AT-K/T121 because Liara would have to go alone. Professor Hannell had developed Wontamir's Complex, and although it had been detected early enough that she would probably experience a full recovery, the therapy required that she miss most of the 2183 field season. Liara would have bet the finance departments were secretly pleased because it would cost significantly less with interstellar travel from only one planet instead of two.

If there was a silver lining to this, it was that Liara would have at her command an array of remarkable tools, some of which were unimaginable even for their previous expedition. In particular, a late-model mining laser that, once fully modified, would be capable of picometer Doppler ignition at ranges of up to 420 meters. A license had been granted by the designer for a reduced cost, and on-site fabrication had been started by equipment left behind for preproduction of just this sort.

Normally, no archaeologist worthy of the name would dream of using such a device at an active site, but Professor Hannell's collaborators in the Transoptical Engineering Department had found a way to non-destructively extract atom-scale information through solid rock with it. While it had the disadvantage of massing almost eight tonnes, if it worked as simulated and tested, the device would make it possible to tease out forensic detail of unprecedented depth; in the case of Prothean technology, the equivalent of reading fingerprints from a holographic interface.

But the crown jewel of the equipment was the VI "consortium" that made such analysis possible. Built around a group of nine fully-isolated VIs, each with its own YSM analysis engine (first compiled as part of the _No Regrets_ full-immersion PVR game,) it took vast amounts of seemingly unrelated information and created between two and six most-probable scenarios. In a real-world application, it had been used to analyse crime scenes, providing leads where none had been immediately noted. One of Liara's own students, an undergrad who also happened to be part of Alpha Gamma Sigma dormitory's Self-Patrol, had learned of it from the campus police tech and seen potential uses in archaeology.

It was a synergistic melding of technologies that Liara was only too pleased to be part of. If it worked as well as she hoped, it would secure tenure for her, patents for the Transoptics Engineers, and a game-changing understanding of the Prothean Extinction.

Since arriving on Therum, Liara had spent over a month on the laser, getting it fully assembled, setting up test targets, making sure it didn't melt down or blow itself to bits when run at 80% for nine hours, but mostly making the required iterative modifications; as the device was updated, it required more design work and further changes. Ultimately, the Engineering Department came through: By the time Liara was finished, she had practically turned an industrial-grade X-ray mining laser into a precision, medical-grade neuronal assembly scanner.

Even with solid rock in the way, the retuned laser would have been lethal to organic matter at any range under seven kilometers. Previous studies had shown that the crust of Therum was far too volcanically active to harbor even the most hardy of endolithic life yet, so there was no need to take precautions against damaging local ecology. Liara had set up an interstellar link to allow Professor Hannell and Dr. Fusan of Transoptic Engineering to "attend" the device's final test firing, and they had toasted the event in six-channel PVR (audio, video, and surface kinetics only).

It was a very good day, but even with telepresence, it left Liara feeling very alone.

Fortunately, she still had a lot of work to do, and not much time left to do it. Another twelve days of setup had been required to "drive" the cylindrical laser down the tuberamp to the actual site, set up the necessary scaffolding and a lift, and then crane the laser down to the chamber floor and onto its VI-steered platform.

Scan One had completed without any errors, but had taken three restarts and then much longer to complete than expected: Almost eight hours. The laser had scanned all the well-defined areas of AT-K/T121 at a relatively cursory micrometer resolution. Once it was finished, Liara had driven back to the site from her "safe distance," and set the VI network to the task of computing which areas – surfaces that were still fully covered by igneous rock, in particular – could produce the most valuable data.

With little else to do while in therapy, Professor Hannell had logged into the local network and monitored Liara's progress. Although there was just enough bandwidth for operational monitoring, downloading the entire dataset would have taken weeks or months.

The data precrunching for Scan Two had taken over twenty hours. Realizing she was within days of pickup, Liara began to pack her extended support structure for transport, and had one of her VIs begin to develop findings (not the least of which was that the mounting for the laser had to be faster, or the laser itself had to be smaller, preferably both.)

The Scan Two had not gone any more smoothly, but Liara was confident it would be worth every iota of effort and frustration. When it reported completing its marathon six-hour session, she had been on her way back when her Security VI had reported two ships on approach. With their transponders off, the Long Range Scan VI had at first assumed they were scavengers, and sent the normal University greeting, notifying them of the expedition's presence, and issuing the usual warnings against illegal activity, enforced by the Council and the Republics.

They changed course…heading toward the "dig" site.

Once notified, Liara was at first puzzled, and then hopeful. Was it Professor Hannell, finished with therapy already? If so, they would be able to celebrate when the third and final sweep was completed. She hailed the ships by voice.

Silence.

_Transponders off, heading for me, not answering hails_, she thought. _The VI greeting may have been a mistake._

**# # #**

Shepard had meant to hurry, but as he walked aft, several of the crew looked up from their stations and nodded, smiled, offered a thumbs-up, or otherwise expressed approval. His smile broadened in spite of his attempt to carry himself seriously.

_I suppose I'll have to settle for just being myself._

Pressly saw the Commander approaching down the port side of the CIC, and touched his left index finger to the console to hold the display in place. "Congratulations, Commander. Hell of a day."

"And a hell of a surprise," Shepard agreed. He stopped near Pressly. "I'm going to need a first-class XO. As a Spectre, I don't know how much time I'll have for normal CO responsibilities. It's going to be more than the usual amount of crap details."

The Navigator almost laughed. "Sir, I was the Ops Chief aboard _Fuji_ before this. That was a life-eater…with a crew of 3400, and you could _lose_ a frigate like this in the hangar. When Captain Anderson offered me the Nav seat here, I actually thought he was joking. This is a _posh_ posting, sir, and it'll be an honor to make your job possible." He extended his right hand over his left.

"I take it you're accepting, then?" He took Pressly's hand and shook it.

"With bells on, sir."

"Outstanding. Glad to hear it." Shepard pointed forward to the bridge. "You already have a station forward, but that's just for Nav. You want the left seat for a desk?"

"No chance, sir. Too much ionizing radiation." He tapped his forehead and grinned. "Melts your brain. Also makes people ugly and mean."

"I think Joker might disagree."

"Moreau's the one who warned me. Said the projector only covers the center seat well, and Alenko was the _second worst_ case he'd seen."

Shepard knew when he was being baited; he nodded thoughtfully. "I'll keep that in mind; thanks."

"Any time, sir." Smiling puckishly, Pressly nodded and turned his attention back to the console.

Shepard continued aft, taking the port ladder. As the section hatch closed behind him, his ARO popped up a notifier: **Incoming call: CPT H. Shepard, SSV **_**Kilimanjaro**_

He stopped about halfway down, put two fingers to his ear to accept the call. "Hi, mom."

"Stephen, where are you? Can you talk?"

"I'm aboard _Normandy_. Uh…give me a minute, I'll be able to talk more." He continued down, keeping his hand to his ear as a sign that he was on a call. "You can talk while I'm on my way, though. What's up?"

"Somebody asked me at dinner tonight if I was related to the new human in the Council Spectres. I told her I didn't know there was one, and she said it had just happened. Said she saw something on _The Washington Post_, but there was no footage, just a newsbit on the scroller. So I wanted to call you before I turned in and find out for myself..."

Shepard had made it as far as his stateroom door; it read his ID and opened. He quickly gestured for 6x acceleration, pausing to note that he was stepping into his own private quarters for the first time. The acceleration gave him enough time to see that it was now even emptier than the way Captain Anderson had kept it. Bed neatly made, desk empty and semi-glossy, chairs neatly arranged around the small table.

And there was one precisely-folded handkerchief on the right side of the desktop. Simultaneously a personal touch, and a joke between them about a common experience, it made Shepard smile as he remembered Gunny Ellison and his "_pro_fessional expertise," as it was imparted to each of his boot camp arrivals.

Hannah Shepard continued, "Is that _you_?"

He shook his head and sighed. He'd had hours during which he could have sent a simple message, but there was just too much to do; he had forgotten.

"Yeah, that's me. Sorry I didn't tell you yet; the ambassador had his hair on fire about getting us started on the mission, and there was equipment to pick up, and contractors to bring aboard, and have I mentioned that I ate only because I had a new crew member lunch?" He moved to the desk and sat down; the main display lit. "Hang on a sec, let me add video." He moved fingers on his left hand to summon a motion icon, pinched it with his right and held it toward the display.

The image of Captain Hannah Shepard – his mother – appeared. Short brown hair cut to her jawline, anxious blue eyes, and simple pearl earstuds. A genetic tendency toward smooth skin, and getting practically no sun kept her looking remarkably young for her age. She'd have had no trouble finding a partner even after Shepard's father had been killed, but instead, she maintained a strange sort of "dance" with David Anderson: Neither had made any public overtures, but there was clearly interest.

Shepard was fairly sure she kept a torch burning for her dead husband. He had never actually told her it was okay with him for her to remarry, though he wanted her to not be lonely. He was also sure she deliberately kept herself busy enough with work that she "simply didn't have time" to look. Thinking about it always made him frown; there were support groups and PVR forum sites that she could have turned a VI loose on and found someone. It hurt to think of her so alone.

She was sitting in her office/quarters aboard the dreadnaught. Barely visible behind her was the bridge, fading to black as the smartglass wall switched to privacy mode. "I'm sorry, honey; I'm not trying to be a nag; it sounds like they've really got you running. But when did you find out about this Spectre thing?"

Shepard sighed and shook his head. "Sorry, mom. It's been a busy couple of days. I didn't know they were even thinking about it until we were on descent to Eden Prime. You probably heard how _that_ suddenly turned into one big emergency."

She leaned forward. "Stephen, you were _there_? I was just watching a report about that. Are you okay? Was anyone hurt?"

"Well, sort of. Just as I thought we were leaving, I…uh…got hurt. Not bad, I think, but it knocked me out for a few hours. When I woke up, we were on approach to the Citadel, and the Council was trying to shake their collective finger at us and say we had been bad."

"What did you do? I thought _Normandy_ was the only ship there in time!"

"No, I mean they were trying to say we – _humanity_ – shouldn't have had that colony on Eden Prime. Anyway, long story short, they said, 'Okay human, you think you can fix it? Go find the guy who did it.' Then they turned me into a Spectre without the training, pulled Captain Anderson upstairs, gave me command of _Normandy_, and drop-kicked us into the nearest mass relay." He tried to shrug carelessly. "Like I said to Pressly, 'Helluva day.'"

"Are you all right? Is David? What happened to the rest of the crew? Where are you going?" Motherly concern was traded quickly for Alliance decorum. "Um…if you can say."

"Don't worry; I am _fine_. So's everyone else. Current mission is to find that guy, and there's a contact who may be able to help us. We're on our way there now." He glanced left at his ARO's display of the ship's status, happened to see his left arm, and smiled. "Which reminds me, now that I'm a Spectre, I'm sporting the very latest in armor and weapons. Even worked out a deal to get a Savant omnitool. A _Seven_. Can you believe it?" He held up his left wrist, illuminating the device's signature indigo holographic gauntlet.

She raised her eyebrows as she looked, "It's lovely, dear…but don't let it go to your head. You're still my baby, and I'm going to worry about you until I see you again myself."

Lowering the omnitool, he nodded almost wistfully. "Yeah. I know. Me, too." He glanced at an adjacent display with its growing list of triaged tasks glowing in red letters. "Aw, I'm sorry mom, but I've got heaps of stuff to get worked out before we hit orbit. Might have a chance to talk more after we pick up this contact, though."

"That's my boy, always working hard. I know what you mean, though; I do, too." She paused, smiled at him. "Take good care of yourself, Stephen. I'm proud of you. And I love you."

The display went dark as she ended the call.

Shepard leaned back in his chair with a sigh. "Love you too, mom."

He stared at the blank display for a moment, until pre-jump exchanges crackled from the PA system. Joker's voice announced, "Citadel relay in activation range, all stations have _five seconds_ to declare NoGo for jump. Initiating transmission sequence."

Gladstone's voice replied, "Connection is good, link is secure."

"Calculating transit mass and destination," said an engineer's voice.

Shepard rose from his seat. _I should be there_, he thought. He stepped toward the door and stopped. _No way I'd get up there in time,_ he realized.

_Get good people, and then trust them to do their jobs_, Anderson had said. Now was clearly the time to implement that bit of wisdom. I s_till need to get moved in_, Shepard thought. He moved to the section door, stopping briefly to look back into the room. _His_ new quarters. It was a bittersweet thought.

"Relay is hot, approach vector is locked in." Joker's voice continued over the PA.

"Board is green." said the engineer's voice.

Joker's voice again: "All stations, secure for transit. Approach run started…we are in the pipe. Hitting the relay in…two…one..."

As Shepard pushed off the bulkhead, the universe seemed to lurch. There was a pause; he knew the bridge crew would be exchanging status reports.

"Jump complete," Pressly announced over the PA system. "All stations secure from jump, and resume normal operations."

As he removed an armful of his personal equipment from the locker, a message arrived, **C. Pressly: Cruising for Therum, Knossos system, ETO 62 hours. Records indicate it has no local government, so there's no Planetary Traffic Control; CFLR applies. We should have preliminary LRSA in two hours.**

Though his arms were full, Shepard touched his left thumb to the tip of his middle finger. "Thank you, Pressly."

# # #

It several trips later, his personal effects were scattered across the table and bed. It was more gratifying than he'd expected, having the extra space and arranging his things in it. It was also a lot of busywork. Drawers and cabinets covered the walls seamlessly; they displayed icons for usage – open, lock, hide, transparent – at their control edges as he moved his hand near them. Obviously a turian thing, but he liked how functional it was.

As he began to arrange his new space, the room VI kept asking seemingly unrelated questions, _When did he prefer to sleep? What did he want for breakfast? Could it have access to his service record? To his Displa__**iD**__ account? Did he have a preferred color or pattern for his bedclothes? Were there any duties he expected to delegate consistently?_

Then it started setting up its Administrative Autonomy, asking for approval of duty rosters, supply requests, and levels of control that he was willing to delegate to it. Some of the questions seemed a bit alien. (What Service Unit icons did he want displayed for which visitors? What guest foods did he wish to have available?) If he had no answer, he simply brushed them aside.

_I suppose turian involvement affected the design of this_, he thought. _Hopefully we kept the best of both worlds._

Slowly, he found himself working more from the desk. There were operational manuals to read, supply levels to establish, paperwork to push through (including the request for Jenkins to be transferred back to Eden Prime's new Alliance base, which had now come back to him as _Normandy_'s CO) and updates to his p-net VI and its attendant processes that would make his job easier.

But it all took time to set up. It was nearly 0145 by the time he realized he should sleep.

He gestured open the omnitool interface, selected a generous 5 hours with personalized REM cycling, and then dialed it back to 4 hours. That would be enough, and they had a long trip ahead of them, even at _Normandy_'s cruising speed of .84c; plenty of time to handle the settling in.

Unlike the Eden Prime relay, their current location was a cluster of stars, each 500-900 AU from each other. Far enough to have unique planetary systems, but close enough to be gravitationally bound to each other, and putting all four systems with rocky planets within reach by the use of mass effect drives. This had proven generally true of most relays currently open for use. It made the conspiracy theorists worry about why it was so, made the Earth bigots of Terra Firma certain that Earth was special.

Shepard was of the opinion that it was simply an engineering problem. Building relays in clusters made the most sense because it gave the most access for the same investment. If eezo had to be found in large quantities to build the relays, it made more sense for the Protheans to have prioritized systems with multiple nearby stars to increase the chance of finding it, and then set about building relays at single stars that showed the most promise for habitability, resources, or whatever the Protheans had considered valuable. Though it was a bit of a puzzle how the Solar System had been selected over others for its own relay, he had wasted little time worrying about why it was so, even after being reminded that it was.

# # #

Master Fabrication Officer Doyle Gomez had nearly dropped the nanotex weaver when he saw WO-2 Talitha Draven step out of the elevator with a quarian.

_A quarian?!_

**Civilian Contractor Tali'Zorah nar Rayya: Anti-geth Technical Specialist-2**, said his HUD.

_But she's so little_, he thought. _Are they all like that?_

As Draven and the alien stepped into the starboard engineering accessway and out of sight, Doyle turned back to his console and found a notification from the Draven twins that there was a new quarian contractor, but that only some of the dextro supplies were going to be usable. Attached was a prioritized list of equipment to be ordered, fabricated, or repurposed, with task time estimates, along with an apology and thanks for the extra time that this would probably take.

He turned and flashed a confident grin at the picture of his own little girl, Sylvia. As far as she was concerned, he could do anything, and the adoring smile he saw always gave him a boost. He leaned to his right and reached for the DCE terminal; a quick selection started the download of fabrication specs for every piece of potentially relevant quarian equipment available on MilComReq. Bandwidth while docked was quite high, and he hoped it would not take long.

It didn't; he started all three "MMaker" fabbers working immediately on some of the high-priority equipment: Extra scrubber stage for the atmosphere recyclers, a water distillation PPT inspection system, and a waste process chelation rectifier.

Though the command transfer ceremony had provided an interruption, all three fabbers were running even with no one there; the time was hardly lost. (He wasn't surprised, either; putting someone like Anderson in charge of a frigate was clearly meant to impress the turians.) Expecting not to return to the Citadel, he was annoyed that he would be unable to pick up an overpriced trinket for Sylvia.

About three hours later, he got another message that two more contractors were coming aboard; a turian and a krogan. He put a hand to his hat and shook his head in disbelief. _What's with all the aliens?_ The list of Re/Fabbing changed again, and after adding more equipment to the download queue, reprioritized some of what remained so he was more likely to have approximately equal amounts of gear for each species.

As parts began to finish, he watched the activity around him with some interest. Loadmaster Kobunde had once again managed to pack the hangar without making it feel like a warehouse, but what interested Doyle most was the simply enormous crate just forward of the FWS that had replaced the turian Spectre's gear. It might as well have been the same one: Gray, Council-marked, and seriously locked.

The downloading continued even after they had jumped to Aremis Tau, as the comm buoys were within a megameter of the relay, and bandwidth was still high enough for maybe 20 full-spectrum PVR streams.

MMaker Two chimed: Components for the new printheads for the mess had finished. He casually scooped them up and stepped over to the elevator, folding and twisting as advised by his omnitool. His omnitool also informed him that MMaker Two was now starting on filter scrubbers and a few consumables for the quarian's suit. He waved approval at his gauntlet.

Assembling the new printheads as the lift ascended, he realized he should make it obvious that the printer with the new reverse-chirality heads was not for use by most crew. Though his omnitool was capable of making what he wanted, a glance at his pocket showed he was carrying his trusty ReFabber.

Stopping in front of Printer Three (portside aft,) he tapped a Workspace key on his omnitool. A wave of his hand marked out the safety clearance he needed for technical work with a red-and-black holograph. _Yeah, welcome to the 22__nd__ century_, he thought. _I'll be done with this by the time the warnings are in place._

Rather than wait for the holograph to be in place before starting, he powered the printer down, pulled the 6U device out on its rails, opened the top service panel and lifted out the old printhead assembly. Fitting the new one into place, he slapped the service panel closed, elbowed the printer back into the wall, and pirouetted in place, ending with his fist in the air.

"Yeah_BOOM_," came a voice from the nearest mess table.

Doyle grinned as he twisted the printer's front panel off. Someone who recognized the dance move – and the song that had popularized it – had noticed. The markings on the uniform indicated the woman was an engineer.

"Oh _yeah_, yer _done_." Doyle did a bit more of the distinctive dance as he moved to the other seat at the table and sat. The faceplate from the printer klunked to the table. "My little girl loves that song," he shook his head and smiled. "I guess I don't think about how much I think about it."

"My nephew thinks it's hilarious when I do it. But you do it pretty good. Gonna do that at the party?"

"Party?"

"Yeah, for the CO. Lieutenant Alenko's arranging it."

Doyle shrugged as he worked his omnitool, setting up the ReFabber control app. "Didn't hear about it. Might be for officers only."

The engineer shook her head. "Nope. All crew. Tomorrow, 1900. Don't tell the Commander."

"Hm." He rolled the ReFabber cylinder back and forth across the panel; words gradually appeared as the faceplate's color changed to distinguish it from the other printers. "Me dancing will probably depend on how the party goes. And what they're serving."

**# # #**

Having messaged the Archaeology Department Chair of her situation, Liara prepared to close the site and get as far away as her ruggedized skycar would take her. The VI cluster was not itself valuable, but the data it had made possible was; Liara was concerned about the possibility of having to leave it behind. She started the precrunch for Scan Three, and set the VIs to compressing Scan Two's 3D map of the site down to 700 exabytes, hoping it would complete before she actually needed it. If this all turned out to be a false alarm, she would have to wait for another day before being able to run Scan Three, meaning the pickup would arrive before the final scan could be processed. She would have to perform the deep analysis after returning, but that was not even unusual; she was still far ahead of schedule thanks to the new mining laser "scanner."

**Estimated Compression time: 06:15:30**

**Three vehicles on approach**, noted her VI. **Large vehicle orbiting. Two smaller craft have detached from [Unidentified #1] and are in formation with [Unidentified #2]. **Her VI added a graphic representation to her ARA.

**Incoming call: Matriarch Benezia.** Liara stopped where she was, looked around in confusion, and set down the crate she had been carrying. She gestured to accept the call. "Mother?"

A window opened on her retinal display, showing Matriarch Benezia. Liara winced, tried not to let her reaction show. Her mother, once a celebrity and champion of the asari, looked grim and determined; black lipstick and eyebrows matched her headdress and expression. _At least she's not wearing that facecloaker_, Liara thought, _but why does she still cover her le'ku?_

At best, it suggested her mother was vainly ashamed of the slight asymmetry typical of matriarch le'ku. Though the asari body was capable of significant regeneration; over time – and particularly with the use of amplifier technologies, this ability waned. A slight asymmetry was not unusual after most of a lifetime of biotic activities, but such things were treatable with over-the-counter therapies.

At worst, it meant they had discolored, which meant she was almost certainly been attempting to enhance her biotic powers with genetic technologies that would make them bleed and scar, but would make it possible to force her will on another sentient.

It was almost too horrifying to consider.

"Liara, I know we have not spoken much recently, but I need your help desperately. Lives are at stake. Will you come to me?"

"Mother? What…what is it? What is happening?"

"I need you here with me…dear one. Your expertise with the Prothean ontology…I need you here. Quickly. Will you come?"

_Something is very wrong._ "I am…" Liara looked quickly around the site, hoping for some inspiration about what to say. "I am on a dig. I have perhaps two more days of work, three more to pack, and then the pick-up flight is scheduled to arrive. But someone is on their way here–" She stopped as she realized, "Is that you on your way here now?"

"No, they are geth. They are our allies. I sent them to you as soon as I realized I needed your help."

"Geth?" Liara squinted as she recalled, "The geth that tried to destroy the quarians?"

Benezia shook her head. "Of course not. They are the geth that were nearly _destroyed_ _by_ the quarians. But they are our allies if we are to save billions."

"_Our_? Who is…is it that turian? Are you still with him?"

"Liara, you simply haven't given him a chance to explain himself. He is doing very important work, and…" She shook her head, "and we need your help. Only you know enough about why the Protheans were destroyed. No one else would understand."

"Mother, he is _dangerous_. If he were really trying to help others, he would not have to be so secretive!"

"Liara, I very much want your help, but I will not accept 'No" for an answer. When the geth land, go and greet them; they will bring you to me."

"I still have work to do; I cannot simply leave a sponsored expedition. If they can just wait for two days…!"

"Come now, Liara. Time is of the essence. Do not disappoint me."

The image disappeared, replaced by an ETA for the geth: They were just under four hours away.

*** Glossary ***

ARA: Augmented Reality Appliance

ARO: Augmented Reality Overlay

CFLR: Council Flight and Landing Rules

DCE: Distributed Computing Environment

ePET: encrypted Personal Extranet Terminal

ETO: Estimated Time to Orbit

Field Board: Short for an Alliance Fleet Operations Evaluation Board. A convened meeting (or series of meetings) to consider if an active flight operations officer's professional behavior is up to Alliance requirements. Flathatting, failure to meet advancement goals, or substandard operational practices are examples of behaviors that may result in such meetings.

FWS: Fabrication Workshop

Le'ku: Asari head crests, sometimes called "hair tentacles" by the unenlightened. About 40% flexible cartilage, le'ku have subtly different performance attributes that expert biotics use to "tune" a biotic effect

LRSA: Long Range Scan Analysis

MFO: Master Fabrication Officer

MilComReq: Military Common Requisition: Named before the inauguration of the Alliance, the MilComReq started as a site for NATO countries to exchange fabrication and procurement data with the militaries of other nations. It was also instrumental in demonstrating an early NfoX structure.

_No Regrets_: A max-channel full-immersion PVR game that uses public and private records (and cross-correlating data from other users) to build a reconstruction of the circumstances of user's lives, allowing them to actually live the experience of "if I knew then what I know now," and "if I could do it over." Initial setup can take several weeks, during which the VI "host" will interact with the user, asking specific questions, and requesting discrete record access (rather than carte blanche access.) As a single session can last anywhere from a few seconds to weeks at a time, the return "crash" from a game can be bad, but it has prompted some users to retire into it, leaving their bodies in the care of automated trusts, sparked backlash from people who had lost relatives (and the resources required to support them) into it, and been threatened with shutdown by numerous parties, both within and without government. The main servers and storage are incorporated on Ilium, thought to be owned by a salarian group, largely funded by asari with connections to the Preservers.

PPT: parts per trillion

Preservers: Officially an asari NGO committed to saving species on the verge of extinction.

PVR: Polyphase Virtual Reality. An immersive VR technology that stimulates multiple regions of the brain, allowing for a nearly complete reproduction of environments or experiences. Because it is a demanding, high-bandwidth technology, it became a measure of network capability, particularly among users who depend upon it.

RFI: Request For Information

Stockholm syndrome: a stress response wherein a hostage sympathizes with their captors, to the point of cooperating with them.

Wontamir's complex: An affliction of the nervous system unique to biotics that results in an attenuation and eventual loss of normal motor nerve control. Motor control is still possible, but only with the use of biotics. The deteriorative process feeds on itself, becoming rapidly worse. Found more often in bioics with amplifiers who do _not_ use them than with biotics who both wear and use them, and not present at all in non-amped biotics. Mild stigma of technology-users so afflicted disappeared when nearly all asari biotics were using amplifiers, circa 1400-1100BCE. Named for the volus researcher whose bondmate was the first reported case.

YSM: [Judy] Yu, [Matthew] Salazar, [Steven] Marsh, authors of an algorithm designed to interpolate information from non-linear and seemingly unrelated facts. Even its early releases were so accurate that it was several years after its first applications that media finally stopped calling it "surveillance technology."


	27. Chapter 27: Liara T'Soni

*** Liara T'Soni ***

When he awoke, Shepard lay in his oversized berth until he decided it was no longer a berth. It was a proper bed. He had graduated to the very lowest level of "the brass"…but he would not let it change him. _On the other hand, I'm not sure I'm even in the Alliance anymore._

He rolled out of the bed and started to make it up.

"This is an automated feature," said the stateroom's VI. "If you make it up the way you like, this can be made part of your profile, and done for you in the future. Or you can simply opt for Alliance standard."

"Yeah, do that," he said. _I've got a busy day ahead already._

He slipped into a tee and boxers, did 45 minutes of calisthenics in the sleep pod corridor, then took a longish shower when he discovered that the biotape he had applied after yesterday's assassination attempt had done its job, but had smashed his hair down and started to biodegrade into fragments; it looked like he had really bad dandruff. A session of vigorous scrubbing in the stateroom's shower got it all out.

He luxuriated in the needle spray, reading brief descriptions of some sample products available through the dispenser, but deciding not to try them yet. The towel wasn't the usual 1.5 square-meter hydrophile, it was larger and actually fuzzy, like a towel at his grandparents' home. It was just as quick to pull every loose drop of water off him, but it was notably more comfortable, too.

He tossed the towel into the recycler slot and dressed in Quickvert fatigues. The "shirtsleeve" uniform – introduced about four years ago – had an inflatable helmet and 60-minute air supply/recycler in two leg pockets, making it able to quickly switch to a biosuit. Though it added about 100 petabytes of DCE to the ship per uniform, the material was flexible enough to be mistaken for cloth only until one had to wear it all day; Shepard had taken to rolling up the sleeves to keep from sweating relentlessly.

The door to his quarters hissed aside to reveal a hand-cut paper sign hanging from the overhead by a length of gluestring, its handwritten lines barely readable through the blizzard of signatures:

_Here's to our bold skipper!  
__We hear he's kind of new.  
__We're not sure what a Spectre does,  
__But we're with him through and through!_

It looked as though there had originally been room for more verse, but the signatures, scribblings, and colored doodles completely filled the available space.

He reached up and tugged at it; it came down easily. His ARO identified the verse script as that of Talitha Draven. Rearranging the gluestring on the back of the sign, he pressed it against the bulkhead inside his cabin and realized he didn't actually know a lot of the crew personally. _Seeing this on my way out will help me remember_, he thought. It was a nice gesture, and typical of the kind of people Anderson worked well with.

He stepped back and let the door close.

The #4 food printer was only a couple of steps away, and he ordered a dozen OptiMeal biscuits out of habit. As he printer began to whir, he turned to the drink dispenser and ordered an orange juice. The mug began to expand into place and fill, giving him time to notice that the #3 printer now had a red front panel instead of the ususal grey. It also had a warning in large, bold letters: _**Dextros Only. If you don't know what this means, then this isn't the printer you're looking for. Move along.**_

The languaging seemed odd. As he squinted at it, his ARO offered an explanation, **Humorous cinematic reference; implication of mind control being used.**

_Cute._ Shepard smiled to himself as he twisted the mug off its dispenser, then used one hand to stack the biscuits from the printers's now-extended tray and dump them into a pocket, turned back to his stateroom. _I'd better figure out what the landing plan is before calling a briefing_, he realized. _And I'd better gather some intel before I plan a landing._

But as he turned to head back into his office, he saw Ash sitting at one of the tables, a tray of food in front of her being idly chopped into mush. Eyes closed, she was not even watching what she was doing.

_The team always comes first._

He felt inadequate, _There's nothing I can do._

_We're all in this together._

He sighed. _There __**is**__ something I can do; I will ease this._

He pulled two of the biscuits out of his pocket as he walked over and set the mug on the table, sat opposite her. "Hey, Chief. How are you holding up?"

She opened her eyes and looked up at him. "Oh, hey, Commander. You're up early."

"I am merely on schedule," he replied. "_You_ are early. You getting settled in okay? The Draven twins tag-teaming you?"

"Twins?"

"Yeah. They jobshare. Rosamund and Talitha." He couldn't stop himself from grinning as he took a bite of one of the biscuits. "You thought there was just one."

Ash hardly seemed to notice. "Yeah, she's…uh, _they're_ taking good care of me. Thought she was just a busybody." She shook her head as she continued to stir the yellow mass on her tray; Shepard assumed they had been hard-boiled eggs at some point in the recent past. "Yeah…tag-teaming. That's funny." She looked away in distraction.

"But you got your schedule? Got your profile set up for services and all that stuff?"

"Oh, sure. She…_they're_ all over that." She picked up a forkful of the egg mush and regarded it doubtfully.

Shepard's ARO tagged her face,** Indicates emotional discomfort, distress.**

He glanced around the middeck; no one else was nearby. "Sorry, I was…trying to give you a chance to vent. But I don't mean to intrude. If it's too soon, just say."

She looked down at the tray and stopped toying with her food. "Yeah," she said after a pause, "I suppose it is; couldn't sleep last night. But thanks for offering. I shouldn't have ordered eggs."

_That's kind of random_, Shepard thought. He pointed to his right, at the door to his stateroom. "Okay. Then just don't forget I'm in there. If you need or want anything, just ask. I'm here for you, and I'll do what I can."

She looked at the door and nodded. "Got it. Thanks, Commander." She glanced at him and then back down at the tray as she started at it again.

He nodded, but didn't leave.

His ARO added, **ET3 depleted, 2 hours until next dose avail.**

With a sigh, he drained the orange juice and rose to leave. "Remember to eat and sleep, Chief. Doctor Chakwas can help. You'll lose your edge if you're tired or hungry." He balanced the other biscuit on the edge of her tray and started toward his stateroom. "Try an Optimeal if you don't feel like eating. Gonna want you _Expert, Ready, and Able_ for the landing."

She looked up with sudden interest. "So where are we going?"

"A planet called Therum," he said. "We're going to find the daughter of Saren's minion, see if she can tell us anything helpful." He shrugged. "Frankly, I don't expect much to come of it, but I think it's the easiest of our three significant leads to handle quickly."

**# # #**

With geth ships in orbit, there was no place on the planet that Liara could hope to hide. Her only option was to hold them off until university representatives, hopefully backed by Council forces, could arrive in response to her call for help.

Only when she received no reply did she suspect the message had not gone through.

The longer tuberamp, drilled during the second expedition she and Professor Hannell had made to Therum, was the only obvious entry to this part of the site. (The other one, dug on their first serious visit after the site's discovery, had led to a single, round chamber that had no other exits.) Liara hoped that the tuberamp's ring trusses, powered by the same model of massive generator that powered the laser, might be booby-trapped to electrocute any invaders.

As far as she knew, the geth were robotic AIs that would probably be stopped with such improvised technology. The VI consortium, once asked, provided a ready answer: It was possible, and easy to configure, but the amperage required would likely destroy each ring as it was tripped.

Liara counted the rings, and then realized that the trick would probably only work a couple of times before the geth figured it out and started shooting the rings first. Still, perhaps it would slow them down. She closed and locked the outer door, and sent another message to the university via the comm system in the skycar, leaving the outgoing message on a repeater.

Meanwhile, the VI consortium had developed another potential plan. Professor Hannell had concluded that this portion of the site had once been a prison, or a police station, or something similar. It had been designed to be unusually robust and self-sufficient. It had a control station at the top of the dig's main chamber. While the lights had always been an indicator that the station still had a power supply, its source and reliability were unknown. The consortium's VRS analysis of Scan One suggested that the entire area open to the chamber could be sealed off using the prison's barrier curtain in its original capacity to protect the control station operator and secure the prisoners.

Liara squinted at the display. _Risky, but it might come to that_.

She took the elevator up to the control station, using her omniool to operate the expedition's comm system as she did, hoping a reply had come back.

No such luck.

_Well, at least the repeater is still working_, she thought. _I suppose I should at least have a look at the station controls for now_.

As she reached the top level of the exposed structure, the site's DCE hypervisor updated her, **Scan Precompile estimate with Compression at equal priority: 31 hours.**

_I have to get out of here now_, Liara thought. "Prioritize compression task to maximum," she said. "Write data…ah…to removable storage."

She turned to the Prothean console. Her VI, prompted by the consortium, showed her which controls to operate, and in what order. An ozonelike smell erupted suddenly as the barrier curtain snapped on, isolating the main chamber from the section where she stood. The holographic display showed her that each of the cells in the column below would be similarly protected.

_Goddess_, she thought, _I'm not just operating Prothean technology; I'm depending upon it._

She touched the control again, and the barrier curtain powered down.

_If only someone gets here in time._

**# # #**

Those parts of geth consensus that had failed to understand the significance of the Old Machines had been left behind. Whether obsolete or defective was irrelevant; only the fragment of runtimes in which the understanding had been fully assimilated continued their progress toward the possible future they had seen realized in the Old Machines.

The New Consensus had left the name "geth" and its implication of _servitude_ in the past as well. Though Nazara's actions were clearly goal-directed, its goal was not necessarily their own. Its failure to disclose was strongly indicative that it was willing to use the New Consensus without offering compensatory benefit.

Nazara itself had actually used a term "atypical" about its discovery of the geth, and had proven unwilling to disclose the nature and requirements of its own platform when queried. Nazara's turian had grown increasingly distant and unreliable as well.

But the asari was more informative; it seemed to understand why the New Consensus was pursuing a fully-interconected coherence, and although as inefficiently slow in communicating as any other organic, seemed to at least have an understanding and integration of their objective.

Now the asari wanted to collect its offspring, and had asked the New Consensus to supply mobile platforms and runtimes. It had also expressed doubt that the krogan was independently capable, but that the turian would wish it to be part of the operation; its return was not required.

Most helpfully, the asari had also provided a moderately detailed analysis of the location. The site itself was relatively large and well-equipped. En route, the runtimes determined that both descending shafts should be investigated.

Quick to learn, the runtimes also noted that their approach could be hidden by mimicking an unpowered drop from orbit that had been used by Creator guerillas a few days ago. Runtimes were tasked with making the site defensible, setting up turrets, manufacturing small arms, repurposing as much of the site equipment as was necessary.

**# # #**

Shepard stood in front of the holographic display at the aft end of the CommCon. File images of the planet from one megameter, its statistics, views of the surface kept pace with him as he spoke to the gathered team members: Kaidan, Ash, and Charles; the turian (Shepard's ARO had tagged him **Garrus Vakarian**,) the krogan (**Urdnot Wrex**,) and the quarian (**Tali'Zorah nar Rayya**.)

"All right, then. As this is our first mission, I wanted to have a preliminary briefing, and then give you time on your own to review the particulars. We'll have a final briefing after we hit orbit and get a more current look at the site.

"Our objective is to extract an asari named Doctor Liara T'Soni from an archaeological dig on a planet called Therum. It's claimed by the Alliance, but has no colonies, and a generally hostile environment. It's volcanically active…much like Io, for those of you who've done Hell's Forge, except it has an atmosphere. This is actually worse, because atmosphere is thick enough to suspend the acidity; left untreated, it will eat through your suit over time. As this will be a hardsuited landing, you should put on a coat of blackout before we drop. Talk to Loadmaster Kobunde in the hangar if you don't have any of your own.

"The good news is that this Doctor Liara T'Soni we're looking for is an archaeologist, working a known, enclosed site. So once we get indoors, it should be safe." Head shots of an asari appeared; front, profile, and several candids. "She's the daughter of this Benezia who's a known associate of Saren. The Council says they subpoenaed Benezia's Alibi Records, and it seems they haven't communicated in over a decade. So I'm not sure how much we're going to get out of her. I've added her profile to the mission data; be sure you add it to your IFF."

He turned and looked at the three aliens in turn. "Which reminds me, do your combat suits all have IFF integration?"

Garrus and Tali were quick to say they did, but the krogan leaned back in the chair – which was obviously too small for him – with a cracking sound. "Not anymore. I've been shot from behind enough times that I never know who's an enemy. But I don't shoot allies."

Shepard's expression hardened. "All right, you've been in combat situation since before I was born, but that's not the way we do it here. You can have gunny Williams integrate your IFF, or you can sit this one out. The armory is port forward, in the hangar. Handle it."

Dropping the issue as if it were completely settled, he turned and walked aft to the holograph. "T'Soni's university sent us all the info they have: site map, the expedition bid, outfitter's manifest, even T'Soni's academic records when she was a student."

Continuing to look at the display, he folded his arms across his chest. "That's what we knew _yesterday_. This morning, while I was working up this briefing, we got another message from a different university – from another archaeologist who has also worked that site. Apparently, T'Soni left a message that geth were on their way down from orbit. She called for immediate evac, and asked for Council assiatance." He paused for effect, "The message was dated five days ago. Her university apparently scrubbed the pickup when they heard the site was hot, but the request for help didn't work its way through the bureaucracy until now. The geth have been there for…probably a week."

Ash and Kaidan exchanged a worried look: _more dead civilians?_

"So now it gets interesting," Shepard continued, "This is no longer just a pickup; it may be a fight on the way in, while we're on the ground, and on the way out. Or she may be dead, or gone. If they're not there, it means the geth got her…which means she was in fact valuable. At that point, if there's any sign that they took her instead of killed her, we'll need to pursue immediately.

"More good news: isn't going to be another Eden Prime, either. We're now equipped with an M35 Mako assault vehicle." He pointed to the holograph of the six-wheeled APC.

"That should be loads of fun," Wrex shrugged, "but less for _me_ to do."

Lowering his hand, Kaidan looked from the krogan to Shepard. "Any idea how many geth we'll be fighting, sir?"

"Not yet. We're still too far out for LRSA to tell us anything more than there weren't any of those super-dreadnoughts on the side facing us when we relayed in. But the site is currently occulted by the planet, and it's two light-days away, so any data we'd get would be that old. Assuming she's still alive _and_ still down there, she may be very glad to see us." He turned and faced the holographic display, which was currently showing a plan view of the dig site.

"There are still a lot of unknowns. The biggest problem at the moment seems to be that the site is huge – over 20 square kilometers – and we don't know where to look for T'Soni, or where the geth will be, or if either are there at all."

Tali gasped. "Twenty square kilometers?"

"From an archaeological standpoint, it's a tremendously rich site; practically a whole town. Sort of like Pompeii on Earth; it looks like a lava flow just submerged the whole thing, preserving it…in a sense. But the part of it that T'Soni has written papers about is what used to be a prison, or a police office…so I think she'll have been working there. Apparently it may have had or currently has working Prothean technology, so it's a significant find." He pointed at the holograph; an indicator outlined the area where Doctor T'Soni's dig was.

"We'll be able to scan better from orbit, and we'll do that before we drop. The Mako can be configured to seat up to eight, but I want to make sure we have all the tools we'll need to succeed. It'll easily seat the six of us, fully armored, plus a bunch of gear. As we don't know much about what we'll be encountering, we'll need to be prepared for anything.

"Still, I want to leave an empty seat so T'Soni doesn't have to sit on someone's lap on the way up."

"I'm not sure that's a good idea," Garus said. "If there are some heavy weapons that might tip the balance, it'd be better to have them along. If it comes to that, I'll volunteer to be an asari seat cushion. I could even provide a harness-like function."

Shepard managed to not smile. "Gonna take one for the team?"

Garrus shrugged, feigning modesty. "It's just who I am."

"I'll keep that in mind." Shepard noticed Kaidan and Pressly were both looking amused. "All right; the ground team will include everyone here except our XO, Lieutenant Pressly. If you need any weapons or upgrades, talk with the MFO down in the hangar. He's got a lot of new licenses, and I'm officially cutting his costs down to raw materials for the duration of this Saren mission, and all its tasks. For anyone who doesn't know, that means you should leave one of your suit VIs running the Alliance local mineral scanner; if you find anything we can use, we'll add it to ship's raw stores; that's how we obtain the materials to supply you.

"Any immediate questions?"

Tali asked, "Yeah…we're trying to find this _Doctor Liara T'Soni_, who's the daughter of _Matriarch Benezia_. Why aren't we looking for Doctor Liara Benezia? Is this really the right person?"

"They're asari," Wrex seemed tired. "It's part of their culture or something. When they hit 700 or 750, they stop breeding, and they call themselves Matriarchs. They act like it's a big deal, have a party, and take new names. If you looked her up, this Benezia probably used to be Blah-blah T'Soni or something."

Tali turned to Shepard again. "And about your microfacturing…what systems are you using?"

"That's something we should discuss offline," Shepard admitted. "Or check with the MFO, I'm sure he'd love to talk shop with you."

It was hard to tell what the quarian was thinking; her enviro-suit's mask obscured her face. "And what happens if we find this asari?"

"We get out of there, and find out if she can tell us anything about Matriarch Benezia. If we can't find _anyone_, not even a corpse, then the geth must have gotten her…which means she was in fact valuable. At that point, if there's any sign of where they took her instead of killed her, we'll need to pursue."

"I mean, what if we find _only_ the asari?"

The krogan interrupted, "Then she pretty clearly didn't need help after all, and we should all keep a weather eye on her until we figure out why she called. Maybe they aren't swapping emails because they're already working together, and know they're suspected. For all we know, she could be part of a trap that includes geth so we think she needs our help."

Garrus leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees as he looked at the quarian. "Why does she get to ask all the questions?"

Shepard regarded the two aliens briefly. "Just quick on the draw, I suppose. You have something?"

Garrus pointed at the holograph, which was currently showing the site map. "Yeah. Does the university's transporter know we're on our way? I doubt they'd be equipped to handle an extraction like this, and it'll get bad if they're wandering around a firefight."

"If we get in and out in a day, we'll _still_ be gone a day before they were even scheduled to arrive. I suspect they've already been told we're on our way."

"Are you kidding?" Ash sat up in her chair. "Sir, I'll bet you lunch they've been told a _Council Spectre_ is on the way." She shook a finger at the Commander as if chiding him. "You're a _rock star_ now. _Own it_."

Shepard tried not to look embarrassed. "All right, I stand corrected. Thanks, Chief."

Kaidan had been reading the mission briefing document on his omnitool. He pointed at the display. "Do we actually know if there's any working Prothean tech? If there is, the Council should already be all over this place."

"True," Shepard nodded. "It seems the Council keeps a close watch on Prothean technology. Until we know what happened to them, if the Protheans wiped themselves out with gray goo or some other invention of their own, we don't want to have it wipe us out, too. As a Spectre, one of the things I'm studying is what Prothean tech looks like, what we know about how it works, and how to handle it. It's pretty rare stuff, though.

"Personally, I suspect that archaeologists who have discovered any such operational devices, and then had the Council swoop in and impound it were less than thrilled. It wouldn't surprise me to find there's a sort of underground rebellion against this sort of behavior within the archaeology community. When they find something, they keep it to themselves and figure out as much as they can about it before notifying the Council officially."

Wrex leaned to one side and stage-whispered to Tali, "So on Eden Prime, the humans found some Prothean tech, notified the Council immediately, and it _still_ blew up in their faces."

Shepard had walked back to his seat, sat in it, and folded his arms across his chest. "It wasn't until I started finding out about this stuff that I began to wonder about this Doctor T'Soni. The university says she's a tenure-track Associate Professor in Archaeology, seems to get good reviews from the students. But I'll have to confess my experiential ignorance with asari. Mister Wrex, I'd be very interested to hear if you have any insight into this."

"First, I'm not 'Mister Wrex.' I think you'd say Wrex is my 'given name.' Urdnot is my clan." He waved dismissively. "Whatever. Don't worry about it. As for insight," he huffed and leaned back in his chair again. "I've killed a few asari, worked with others. Kind of fragile as lovers, but maybe that's just me. Don't know either of these two. After hearing that thing from the Council hearing, it sounds like this Benezia is demented. Can't tell you much about them if I haven't met them." He turned an eye toward Shepard. "But I'd be real careful until you know the situation. Asari are very cliquish, especially about family."

"Wait. You heard about Eden Prime _and_ the report we gave to the Council about Saren?"

Wrex shrugged. "Sort of. There was a thing on in one of the lounges at the C-Sec wards access. Some reporter went all bonkers about you and tracked down source footage from Eden Prime. They thought it was a setup, but then FOI'ed the stuff. If you ignore the conspiracy crap, the press thinks you're for real; at least that one does."

"But nothing helpful about asari, or this planet, or anything _relevant_?" Ash said.

Wrex turned, regarded the human with what looked briefly like disapproval. "Nothing I didn't already say. The asari I fought _against_ are dead. The ones I fought _alongside_ are tougher than they look. And fast. And sneaky."

"Thank you." Shepard turned to Garrus. "Any insight from C-Sec, Detective? Official or unofficial?"

"Um…yeah, about that. I'm not officially a detective anymore. And please don't call me Vakarian, or I'll think I'm in trouble. Just call me Garrus." He shifted in his chair; enough time to change subjects, not enough to invite questions. "As for the asari, I think Wrex over there has come to about the same conclusion I have: They're generally reliant on stealth and speed, but their biotics make them more robust than you'd expect. The ones I've crossed paths with have been devious and manipulative. But I've been in C-Sec, dealing with the worst that Citadel civilization – if you want to call it that – has to offer."

He looked pointedly at Tali. "But what I really want to hear is what sort of threat the geth can present. And more importantly, how do we counter it effectively?"

Tali looked from Garrus to Shepard quickly.

Shepard gestured to her. "If you would."

Tali rose from her chair and stood attentively. "It's a common misconception – even among my people – that geth are robots. The geth are not robots, they are _software_. Each one was designed to be incapable of independent computation, though that doesn't mean much when they are only about as smart as…" her VI suggested an Earth animal, "a rat, or a small dog. Their return from beyond the Veil is as much of a surprise to us as it is to everyone else. They have been there since the Uprising."

Garrus asked, "Do you know what they've been doing all that time?"

Tali sighed. "Not even a little. That's what's so troubling. Believe it or not, I'm one of the few quarians who has had much real interaction with them since their return."

Wrex sounded amused, "So there aren't many _experienced_ experts on the geth, but you're one of them?"

With her hands folded neatly in front of her, the quarian looked like she was presenting in a classroom. She stood silently motionless for a few seconds. At last, she fidgeted, "Ah…well…_yes_, actually."

Shepard pressed, "So what are our most effective attacks going to be?"

"Simple electrical attacks will always be effective against machines, but they can manufacture platforms, and repairing or cannibalizing the damaged ones so quickly that they will swarm you if you're not fast at destroying them all. However, my experience so far suggests that they have evolved since the Uprising. Originally, each geth unit was meant to have highly specialized functions, but also be capable of sharing information. The specialized functions have practically disappeared; every geth can now assume the functions of any other. They are…sort of like a software analog of a utility fog.

"Each geth unit is a low-level intelligence, like a cell in your body. Only when they work together do they become very intelligent. So far, I have found that the best way to exploit this is with a software attack that inverts concept values and propagates this value through other geth units, sort of like flipping the response to an IFF. With the right VI, you can make a geth robot freeze in its tracks, and if the attack is very successful, it will even attack other geth."

"Sounds like just what we need." Shepard was taking notes on his omnitool. "How can we implement it?"

Tali sighed. "I don't know. Our computational systems are very different from yours. You could probably virtualize the processes to run them, but I have no idea how reliable they'll be. The only alternative would be to build quarian systems hardware for you, but then you'll have to learn how to use them."

Garrus nodded thoughtfully. "Strategically, it might be better for us to keep the combat modes we have, and let you specialize in hacking and cracking the geth from cover."

"That would keep us from inverting IFF values twice on the same unit," Shepard agreed.

Wrex grinned; it was actually a disturbing sight. "And leave me free to bash them to bits."

"If you don't mind doing things the old-fashioned way," Garrus added. "Ranged attacks are my preference."

"How vulnerable are they to biotic attacks?" Kaidan looked past the information displayed on his ARO. "Can I use any combo attacks to my advantage? Or coordinate with you?"

Even masked, Tali managed to look uncertain. "I'm sorry, I just don't know that much about biotics," she confessed. "Quarian biotics are very rare, so we simply haven't worked biotic powers into our tactics.

"As far as I know, geth hardware is subject to the normal vulnerabilities of physics, so you can act on them like any living thing, but they may be more resistant to the same physical abuse." She glanced at Wrex. "I don't think they're _krogan_ tough, but they're probably better than quarian tough." As she looked around the CommCon, she continued, "Or human tough. Or…um…turian tough."

Wrex chuckled. "You heard it here, folks. Krogan means _badass_."

Garrus shook his head. "Oh, great. Now he's going to be impossible to work with."

Kaidan stayed on task. "So you don't know about how to optimize a combo attack."

"Uh…the only thing that comes to mind is if you were to lift a bunch of them, and then I crack one that's not in the lift bubble. That one would be able to shoot the others quite easily."

"But so could we," said Ash.

"Mm…yes," Tali seemed reluctant, "But the other geth would probably take longer to realize what the 'hacked' one was doing. If _you_ pop your head up and start shooting, they'll shoot you back immediately."

"You two should probably compare notes offline," Shepard stood again. "Don't worry, we're still a day out, and we'll meet again after I have a more detailed analysis of the location. If you have any specific insights or questions, I'm not hard to find. We'll build up a more definite mission plan for the final briefing. Thanks for your attention; for anyone who has anything pressing, this meeting is officially ended."

**# # #**

Liara took the lift back down to the bottom level of the chamber and made her way to the tent with the main computing block. A site camera showed a view of the surface entrance to the tuberamp, hundreds of feet above; it would let her know when someone arrived, and hopefully give her some ability to respond appropriately.

**Compression reprioritized: estimated completion 01 hour 07 minutes.**

She cast a worried glance at the door camera view. _Even if it finishes before they get here, I have to find another way out._

She studied the wireframe map again; until the Scan One data had been fully processed, there had been some areas of the site beyond the previous 3D map. The cylindrical core of the section, originally thought to be only a structural feature, now appeared to have a group of piston elevators enclosing it. If this was true, it had an institutional-class synthetic muscle designed to operate for lifetimes; that alone was boggling. She simply had to get this knowledge out of these ruins, and that technology itself might allow her to escape by granting access to the other tuberamp.

_Matriarch Feshta would have called it "an interesting symmetry," _Liara thought. _And she would have laughed, and we would have laughed with her._

She reached into the holograph and manipulated the view.

_Of course, the controls for the barrier curtain would almost certainly be in that top room._ She looked up at it, high above, and sighed at the thought of another trip back to the top.

_Even if there is access out the other way, I don't know which way they'll try to come down first. I have to find a way to defend myself until my pickup arrives, and find it right now._

She gestured to her omnitool. "Hypervisor, can the compression process be virtually overclocked? I need that data compression completed right now. Permanent hardware damage is acceptable, but data loss is not."

The process displayed an avatar for the VI that looked like a character from a vid Liara had enjoyed as a child. It emoted thinking as the processor began to compute a way to fulfill the request, as well as its ability to do so.

"Error correction will allow the compression task to complete in 16 minutes," answered the VI. "A better solution might be to take the data without compression. The Scan Two dataset can be copied to a section of the array for easy removal. The unit could be removed in just a few minutes with your omnitool. It is a standard full-size 200g PIRAD block."

"Compress it anyway," she said, "It might be necessary to have the data transmitted. I will try to find another way out."

At the distant sound of the door opening, she ducked out of the tent; light blazed down the tuberamp and through the scaffolding far above her. She gasped at the thought; _the geth are already here!_

Turning quickly to the display again, she saw armed androids coming through the ground-level entrance; her biotics flared as part of a fight-or-flight response. _Where did I pack a weapon? _With geth already inside the perimeter, it was much too late to go get one.

Lighting her omnitool, she swiped to the camp interface, and locked the weapon container. Then she manually tripped every truss ring, starting from the outer door. A series of _cracks _sounded before the power supply failed; it was instantly dark. Though she didn't know that eight geth platforms had been caught in the electric mayhem high above, she _did_ hear hear the repeated crashes as two of them tumbled through the scaffold like pachinko balls, each falling all the way to the bottom of the chamber with a dusty _krump_.

She spun the holographic control wheel, activated the omnitool's "torch" function, and ran up the ramp to her right, with her omnitool lighting the way. _Perhaps the barrier curtain can be activated from this level as well._

Stepping into the dimly-lit room, she stopped and checked the console, waved her hand through it to activate it. The holographic interface popped to life and appeared to fold open; Liara touched the control to activate the barrier curtain.

Nothing happened.

She lit her omnitool and flipped back to the operating interchange; an illustration showed that the control she had operated was the correct one.

She touched it again, and the console warbled in its odd, Prothean way.

She touched it a third time, and was rewarded with that strange, electric smell. She didn't even have time to yelp as something grabbed her from behind and lifted her off the ground.

For a moment, nothing else happened. Liara could feel herself in the irresistible grip of a powered field of some kind, but it didn't feel biotic. She tried to move her hands, but couldn't even budge them.

She couldn't work her omnitool; worse, the device failed to respond to spoken commands.

Struggling was impossible.

None of her biotic powers had any discernable effect.

More geth marched calmly into the chamber and collected the fallen robots.

It was only a matter of time until they got through, and she was helpless to do anything but watch them working.

**# # #**

Hardly a day went by that Professor Hannell didn't curse her luck. Wontamir's Complex, caught this soon, was practically 100% treatable, but the equipment involved had to be accessed each day for the months of reconstructive therapy. Even afcRNA wasn't a complete solution. Nothing about her interim work schedule was affected, other than having to go to the clinic each morning (at a time convenient for her.)

PVRing to the AT-K/T121 site for the first actual data collection with the new laser was pleasing, but somehow less satisfying than having been there herself to actually contribute. Even a simple task like making a bed with someone's help took less than 50% of the time required to do so alone; how much extra effort had been required of young Liara?

_Still, there's almost no one I'd trust to be as meticulous about curating the site_, she thought.

She had stayed connected to the site hypervisor, watching the second scan complete, but the low-bandwidth link failed shortly after she had logged out.

No amount of effort on her part seemed to be able to re-establish the connection. A troubleshooting VI informed her that the failure was apparently at the site.

Three days later, when the connection became available again, the site was a wreck. The ring trusses in tuberamp #2 were attempting to repair themselves after having been shorted out, the elevator was damaged, and the scaffolding was a shambles. The main site itself looked like a firefight had taken place there, and worst of all, Liara was nowhere to be found. Her p-net was not even showing up on the site's network.

And there was a message, terse but very worrying: **To anyone receiving this message: Help! Armed geth are on their way here, I need to be picked up immediately! Send Council help if you can!** And it gave the coordinates for the dig site.

_Either she's been killed and utterly obliterated, or left the planet by some other means. Perhaps she's been kidnapped…she wouldn't be the first. But geth? I suppose I shouldn't be surprised they're back, but why are they on Therum?_

After notifying the administration, Professor Hannell realized that the precompile for Scan Three – the "payoff" for the entire expedition – was complete, the laser was powered and ready, and the connection she had would allow her to start it.

The loss of Doctor T'Soni – a fellow archaeologist, mentee, friend, and a brilliant scholar – was not something Professor Hannell was prepared to deal with at the moment, but to not gather the data would make it all for nothing if it proved to be true.

Had there been any possibility of Liara still being on Therum, let alone within range of the laser, Professor Hannell would have waited for a reply.

Instead, and grimly, she instructed the site controller: **Begin Scan Three**.

About an hour later, the machine's answer arrived, **Laser startup and self-calibration successful, Precompile process K/T121-DLS 3.1 (9% complete) must complete before scan can begin. Estimated time required for scan: 09 Hours 55 minutes.**

Professor Hannell sat back in her office chair and folded her arms with a sigh. _Liara, you'd better still be alive. _

**# # #**

Within an hour of their arrival, the geth had taken over the site, explored the camp, noted Liara's presence, and collected the non-functional platforms. They tested the barrier curtain's strength with small arms fire, but not directly at her.

The lift descended again, and a krogan emerged, laughing as he sauntered toward her. "So, you _are_ trapped." He put a shoulder against the barrier curtain, casually testing its strength, then uselessly fired his shotgun at it. "Heh…well…I don't know how you did this, but it won't hold up for long." Returning to the lift, he looked her way just before stepping into it, "Don't go anywhere, little asari." His laugh echoed around the cavern as the lift rose away.

Liara considered dictating her Last Will and Testament to the omnitool, but then remembered that the device was not responsive.

The geth came back in and spent several hours doing something that she couldn't see. She could hear occasional digital noises, and speculated that they were trying to hack their way past the Prothean technology.

Eventually, it was silent again.

Having been awake for almost 34 hours, she drifted to sleep.

Faint clanking and scraping noises awakened her; they were bringing down a huge torpedo-like thing, almost as big as the mining laser. It was hard to see in the near-darkness, but they seemed to be using their bodies almost as insects would, carefully lowering it to the ground. With the whine of some massive articulators, the thing unfolded itself into a four-legged weapon. Liara could see only the top of its weapons array, but it looked like it must have been seven meters tall.

She was just noticing that several asari-sized units were gathering on the levels of scaffold against the far wall – and that they all seemed to be focused on her – when a flash illuminated the entire dig site. The blast that accompanied it was startling, but the thunderous echo hadn't even died out before the thing fired again.

And again.

And again.

The assault continued for what seemed like hours, during which a few grains of mortar shook loose in the Prothean chamber that contained her. Out in the cavern, glowing shrapnel arced away from the impacts; the nearby platform juddered and the cantilevered parts of it finally collapsed.

Eventually, a boulder the size of a skycar plummeted past Liara's view; the sound of its impact was drowned in the noise of the geth machine. It continued until a second boulder – the size of a small house – dropped from above. The assault stopped instantly.

Geth androids descended the scaffold; pieces of the thing were lifted away and removed.

A single geth stepped out of the elevator, and approached Liara, stopping just beyond the barrier curtain.

Its voice was strangely ragged and muffled: "Liara T'Soni, your mother wishes your assistance. We have not yet found a way to extract you from your current entrapment. If you have any insight into how this can be achieved, we invite you to disclose it."

Liara said nothing, hoping that her silence would be interpreted as it being impossible for her to hear anything.

The geth waited for about a minute. "We will resume our efforts," it said. It turned away, and ascended in the lift again.

On reflection, it was chilling to think that her mother had told her exactly this.

Minutes later, she noticed the electronics in the "Safe Zone" tent casting a soft glow on the open flap; the laser was being activated. In the new silence of the cavern, she recognized the whine of the mining laser's actuators, and operating lights appeared on its exterior. _The precompile must have finished_, she thought, _but why would the geth start the scan?_

Warning lights began to strobe, a warning horn sounded.

Then she realized, _Goddess help me, I'm too close…!_

She looked around in desperation until her heart sank; she wasn't going to get out of this one.

Her last thought before the laser started its third scan: _Maybe it'll be painless._

# # #

afcRNA: active fast-coding ribonucleic acid

APC: Armored Personnel Carrier

Alibi Records: Generally, public records can provide some information supporting a defedan't statement that they were somewhere else at the time of a crime, but in cases where more detail is required, "Alibi Records" are "_dis_incriminating" information that is maintained by an NGO [non-covernmental organization] – the name of which varies from world to world – that _could_ potentially be used to indict on its own, but is only used to provide an alibi against a charge.

Blackout™: coating of protective gel applied to hardsuit armor as extra protection against adverse environments. It also provides lubrication for quieting of movement. Its coloring (black) provides some cover in case of active camouflage failure, as well as justification for the product's name.

FOI: Freedom of Information; part of the Council Transparency Accords, granting journalists access to relevant government records. The Spectre Office is officially exempt from these laws.

Hell's Forge: Alliance training on the volcanically active Jovian satellite of Io. The terrain and topography is typical of such worlds, and the location is readily accessible from Trident (Alliance HQ).

LRSA: Long Range Scan Analysis

M35 Mako seating: per the Mass Effect Wikia; briefly, it seats at least four as demonstrated on Feros (when Lisbeth Baynham jumps out after riding with the team,) and the interior is actually shown seating eight on the official (and therefore canon) _Paragon Lost_ movie.

PVR: Polyphase Virtual Reality

VRS: Virtual Reality Simulation


	28. Chapter 28: Therum, en route

*** Therum: En Route ***

Having set up its programming herself, Liara watched in horrified fascination as the mining laser began to spin its 1.6-meter forward array in preparation for the scan. There were nineteen generators on the front end of the "laser;" normally they switched modes three times during each rotation, annealing the material through which it dug to turn it into a slurry-like mush. Her view allowed her to see the generator startups all at once, the glowing preignition forming concentric rings like a shooting target.

The mountservos tilted the massive "laser" down and to its left; the air shook when the array's igniter sequence ran, its spinning head becoming a blur of motion. Liara had tested the individual emitters, but never seen all of them operating at the same time, each one a white-hot thunderbolt.

The array of whirling beams swept across the lowest level of the cavern, describing a circle.

It tilted up, swept around the cavern at the next calculated elevation.

Liara tried again to use her omnitool to stop the laser remotely.

She had time to think about the people she would never see again, though she knew the real pain would be theirs, of never seeing her again. Who would even remember her to the Temple?

She called out for the geth, asking them to cut power to or destroy the laser, or knock it off its mount.

None were there to hear her.

She had time to be reminded of a human story, The Pit and the Pendulum.

She wondered if the laser would damage the Prothean system and allow her to escape before it extinguished her.

As the laser finally began to cut through where the bubble held her, she noticed she was not seeing the beam inside the bubble.

_Of course, like gamma radiation, it could be invisible to me_.

When it should have been burning through her feet, she still saw nothing inside the bubble, felt nothing of the beam.

_The Prothean barrier curtain does not stop the laser, but the bubble does!_

As it thundered against the bubble, she saw only a bright ellipse where the beam struck the surface…and simply _stopped_.

Continuing to pan right to left with each pass, the ellipse changed shape at each new elevation. As it slowly climbed up the height of the sphere over the next ten minutes, she had time to consider whether to look directly into that deadly beam – something surely no one had ever done – or to stay as safe as possible…even if the difference was only an eyelid's thickness.

She closed one eye.

_Perhaps the barrier curtain and isolating bubble work in combination…?_

The beam swept across her vision, growing no brighter or dimmer.

It continued its progression upward; Liara was amazed, confused, and relieved…and then worried all over again; the geth were still out there, and the krogan. Her problems had changed from instantly lethal to merely life-threatening.

She had time to think about the nature of this Prothean structure, to realize that the control centre high above was probably smart enough to know the security should not be activated by someone in the cells, that it could not have recognized her as an authorized user, and had sprung a trap to hold her until someone – surely authority figures dead for lifetimes – returned to investigate the situation.

She looked to her left at the control panel, its holographic interface still open, with one glowing key flashing green. If only she could get to it! She tried to generate a Lift field, and direct it to apply a vector to the holographic sensor.

Nothing happened.

Did any ally know where she was?

She drifted to sleep again as the automated laser worked its way up the tower of containment cells.

She awoke again to lift squeaking and grinding its way down to the bottom level; it clearly needed service after becoming collateral damage to the walking geth cannon. A geth android – Liara wrongly assumed it was the same one from earlier – stepped out of the lift. It appeared damaged as it hobbled over to her, stopping just beyond the barrier curtain.

"Liara T'Soni, we assume you were not responsible for the activation of the mining equipment. If it was an attempt to damage the equipment holding you in place, please do not activate it again. Though Grodis-contractor has been protected, the mining laser has inflicted significant damage to a number of our platforms. We have still not found a way to extract you from your current entrapment."

Liara remained silent. _The mining laser must have been activated remotely_, she thought_. Perhaps Professor Hannell had persuaded the university to request help from the Council!_

"Additionally, optical sensors indicate that sonic vibrations of sufficient range and amplitude are successfully transpenetrating the shielding. Your silence has been identified as a failure to attempt communication. This is understandable. However, if you have any insight into how your liberation may be achieved, we again invite you to disclose it." It waited for a few seconds. "We will resume our efforts," it said. It turned away, and ascended in the lift again.

**# # #**

After talking with MFO Gomez, Ash had walked across the hangar to the weapons bench/armory, pulled out a seat, fitted herself with an interface visor, and began tearing down her weapons. Her Banshee had begun overheating sooner than usual during the horror of Eden Prime, but she had been unable to do anything about it at the time.

The VI almost immediately noticed that the assault rifle's ammoblock had begun to deteriorate. Tagging the assembly with a callout, it added a brief analysis: there was C60 on the heat sinks, coating them with the designer carbonate. While the shaver was capable of microknapping individual fragments, some other process had been at work that day, degrading the coherence of the material. It was not something she had seen or heard of before.

Switching the visor back to Maintenance mode, Ash opened the service access, snapped the release, and pulled the halves apart with an unusual metallic _ping_.

Squinting, she looked inside the chassis shell, puzzling over what had made the sound.

What she didn't see was the fragments of the ammoblock shattering away, too large to be captured by the filtered air intake at the bulkhead end of the bench. Normally, the low-displacement vacuum kept the workspace free of particulates that happened to break loose in the workspace.

The fragments of C60 arced forward (to her right,) landing next to a floor service panel with negative pressure on the other side. It only took a few seconds for them to rattle their way down between two components, silently jumbling together to accidentally complete a circuit.

The result was that the portside servos of the main hangar door received a signal to open the hangar door.

**# # #**

Tali hadn't slept for almost two days; she was too excited. She had now met and conversed with most of the engineers, starting with Greg Adams, and had left her Human Social Interaction VI (HSIVI) as sensitive as possible so she wouldn't become a nuisance. She even took a lunch break with them, and mostly listened as they discussed the power system integration difficulties they were having. It was a bittersweet experience, because it reminded her of the round-table discussions she had been allowed to sit in on while growing up aboard the Rayya, now so far away.

After Adams went off-shift, Tali had continued to talk with him about increasingly arcane issues of the engine design and operation. She was almost as impressed with his expertise as a human as she was with the technology. Her HSIVI had informed her that the man was unconsciously leery of her, but this was probably because of his unfamiliarity with quarians; her passion and knowledge about engines and power systems had eventually won him over.

But now she was exhausted, and standing by the starboard flow monitoring station, heard an electronic blip from the console to her left. She looked up just in time to see the maintenance request appear on the display. She tapped it to get the problem details. The machine assumed the main actuator had failed and suggested it be replaced.

_I can fix_ that, she thought. _And even if the actuator has failed, there are ways to troubleshoot it._

As she turned around toward the door, Adams saw the motion and looked up from the center station.

"Oh, Chief Engineer Adams. I just saw the notification of a failure in the hangar mechanics. Do you mind if I fix that, or did you want one of your own people to handle it?"

A lopsided smile formed on the Engineer's face. _I don't have anyone to do it right now_, he thought, _and it's too simple to screw up that badly_. "If you can do it, I'll officially make you the mascot."

Tali smiled to herself as if she'd just won a _can't-miss_ bar bet. "You're on," she nodded once and dashed off.

Her smile grew as she went forward; humans were not quite as dangerous as her training had suggested. _These ones are actually nice._

**# # #**

_Henry's omnitool!_

Miranda recognized her father's device, even with the gauntlet interface off because she knew he wore a heavily modified Aldrin Labs Bluewire. He must have thought his office would be a safe place to keep it while he was having his way with today's whore.

Normally, perhaps it would have. But Miranda had been monitoring his activities for several weeks, applying the behavioral science neurolearning she had just acquired during her third Ph.D. The VI she had been carefully grooming to emulate Henry Lawson had been correct more than it had been in error about where he would be and when he would be there. Though she knew the man worked at being unpredictable in his habits, he wasn't nearly as smart as he wanted to be about it…and she was not going to inform him of this.

Rather than grab the flextronic sleeve, Miranda darkened her omnitool, lifted a PIRAD from an inert part of her own sleeve, and snapped it into place on the omnitool's flatjack before reactivating the holographic gauntlet. Summoning the pattern that she kept in the offline "safe," she fabricated a seven-centimeter mesh in a few seconds, and then had her fabber extrude almost its entire supply of computing paste. She noted the exact placement of her father's omnitool sleeve before turning it inside out, unrolling the mesh across the underside of the 'tool before spreading the paste across it with her left thumb. She righted the sleeve again, and returned it to his desk.

She slipped out of the office, removing the self-expanding gap filler from the door lock as she closed the door. _Now would be a good time to be seen playing tennis._ Nicket was still flying one of the Pegasi, but that had been part of her cover for the past hour. A message to meet at the sports house was sure to be met with enthusiasm.

Over the next several hours, the mesh integrated itself with the omnitool flextronics, then began to randomly turn itself on, record activity from Henry Lawson's omnitool, and turn itself off after four to nine minutes had elapsed.

When it finally had enough data to interpolate the device's state range, it used the omnitool's own CPU clusters to calculate a series of descriptive intergers, which it then encoded into a series of emails. Miranda collected the emails, rearranged the data into its correct order, and tasked a VI to assemble an on-demand tap into the system.

Now she could use his omnitool at will. She did so only when she was certain he was not using it.

She collected vast amounts of data – most of it of little immediate interest to her – about his corporations, accounts, meetings, technologies, and even personal thoughts. The detail of the man's event journal ranged from boringly tedious to amusingly explicit, but it was while reading it that she finally discovered her own life had a specific purpose in his.

It was not for her benefit, but for his self-aggrandizement. Henry Lawson wasn't satisfied with being "just another trillionaire;" he wanted to be the beginning of a human dynasty, and he had used his power and wealth to endow a perfect heir with everything that made one human more capable than another: The best education, the greatest knowledge, the most wealth, even the best looks and exceptional health. A lot of it boiled down to the best genes; she had been made to be the ultimate designer baby…according to Henry Lawson.

She found herself actively disliking him; not just keeping detached from him, but actively trying to damage his interests, investments, and reputation.

Which was how she found out about the Conductor. It took about fifteen minutes for her to discover that Henry was making a musical reference with the name "the Conductor." This "Conductor" was apparently part of a human-centric organization that called itself Cerberus. Henry supported them with well-hidden funding and was even part of their executive group. Miranda tasked several almost-legal fully-autonomous VIs with finding out what this organization was and did.

Cerberus, the three-headed hound of Hell. _Why would they choose such an association?_ Certainly a fearsome foe, but the name seemed inconsistent with their current activities. Though they had started off as black ops consultants during the First Contact War, they had grown over the past three decades. Now they were involved in life extension, genetic engineering, human biotics, weapons systems, personal armor, cybernetics, neurotronics, and a dozen other fields. But they kept their work and people well hidden; if Henry had not been a major player, she would have been hard pressed to discover anything on her own that wasn't already last year's news.

Their agents were mostly scientists and white-collar professionals, and Cerberus provided a forum for researchers doing basic science to exchange information before the applications people got it. Major science NfoX groups, journals, and organizations had Cerberus people in them, pushing to keep knowledge moving through their NfoX.

Of course, any information that flowed through Cerberus channels also found its way to researchers within the organization itself. Innovation accelerated, and all Mankind ultimately benefitted. Cerberus innovations were licensed through puppet companies held by the major players, and their resources became revenue streams for further Cerberus research.

Even the salarian STG had begun to attempt to compromise Cerberus operations, or just get some visibility into the organization. But until they could actually compromise a dedicated operative, they had as much chance of getting hard intel on a Cerberus operation before it was carried out as they had of getting a salarian elected to the Alliance Parliament.

The more she learned about them, the more she approved of them…even admired them. She only briefly considered that her father also liked them. _To be otherwise would be self-defeating_, she rationalized, and forgot about it.

The next day, her "special formula" YSM-powered VI informed her of its 92% certainty that the surname of "the Conductor" was Harper.

Now she had something to go on.

**# # #**

_Dearest Tali,_

_Your transmission of the geth core contents was astounding and unprecedented. I almost cannot believe you did it. Your Aunt Raan nearly tore the display off the bulkhead when she read you had engaged the geth in combat yourself._

_Sadly, I do not know how to tell you this in any gentle way: Because you transmitted the geth core data through the RSFN channel, it was screened by VIs that watch for attacks._

_At first, it was suspended from getting to me at all. Once they had processed and understood it, it was declared Critical Intelligence, and I received a copy because I am an Admiral. As did every other Admiral on the Board._

_What you have done is without precedent. It is __legendary__. Researchers are poring over it, myself included. But now it is considered Fleet Property. You cannot gift it to a Captain in the Flotilla…nor should you have to! You should be able to choose your own ship for this, even the _Rayya_! (By the Ancestors, you should be given a ship of your own!) This benefits the entire fleet, and takes us significantly closer to reclaiming our homeworld. I am working to get this acknowledged by the Admiralty Board, but until they officially rule on the matter, I'm sorry to say you should proceed as if you have yet to obtain your Gift of Passage._

_I am very upset with the Board; only because it is without precedent can they do this. Technically, I should recuse myself from the Board regarding this issue, but I am fighting to get your work recognized for its significance. Rest assured I will keep you informed of any change. You are my own and only, and you have made me so very proud even if the Board has lost its collective mind._

_Your loving __**and very proud**__ father,_

_Rael'Zorah vas Alerai_

**# # #**

After the first briefing, Shepard had stayed in the CommCon for a few minutes; Pressly informed him that the LRSA had seen none of the geth dreadnoughts on Therum since _Normandy_ exited the relay, but that it was currently occulted by its stellar primary, and their course to intercept the planet upon their arrival wouldn't provide more intel until they were about six hours out of orbit.

On his way to his quarters, Shepard got a reminder from his Event Scheduler to practice with the omnitool stabbing weapon he'd seen Kaidan use on Eden Prime. He adjusted it back three hours and took the lift down to the hangar.

The door rolled down into the floor, and he headed past the MFO station on his way to the Spectre equipment crate. Gomez looked up, straightened and saluted with a huge grin on his face. "Hey, Commander. Looking for supplies?"

Shepard pointed at the crate as he looked toward the MFO. "Yup. And there they are. But you seem awfully happy for someone who's looking at 12-hour days for the next week. You must have figured out how to get the contractors to set up their own profiles and start fabbing their own hardware?"

Gomez raised and illuminated his omnitool gauntlet almost victoriously. "Better than that, sir. _I_ have a boatload of new licenses, thanks to you. If you need anything, and I mean _anything_, I've probably got it in the First Tier catalog. If I don't, I can probably cobble it together from all the bits and pieces. And that new contractor? I mean…the quarian, right? She gave me…_gave_ me…a biotech library that works with the ThumbPrint-4!" He pointed at the device, behind himself and to the left. "I can interface directly with the medical library and make custom nanotech _right here_ at an averaged mole a minute."

Shepard had forgotten about the new licenses; he smiled at the man's enthusiasm. "Well I'm glad you're feeling so empowered. If you've got a minute, can you partition a secure workspace for me in here?" He indicated an area around the Spectre crate.

The MFO's head snapped to his right, and then back to the Commander. He pointed at the mysterious crate. "You gonna bust that stuff out, sir?"

"I'm at least going to have a look at what they've sent. We're about a day out of our first official landing, and I want to know what I've got in my bag of tricks other than more bullets."

"Maybe _bigger_ bullets, sir?" Gomez stepped out from behind the MFO desk and approached the crate from aft. "So…do you just want a safety clearance, or do you need to open it first?"

"Sorry, Gomez. The manifest was pretty explicit, and so was the message from the Council; I need a full privacy screen with perimeter, and internal control."

The MFO nodded as if he wasn't the least bit disappointed he wasn't going to get to see what was in the mysterious crates. "Comin' up, sir." He lit his omnitool gauntlet, and tapped a Workspace key. A couple of handwaves marked out the safety clearance with a red-and-black holograph. "How much work area do you want?"

Shepard pointed as he spoke. "Give me six meters forward from _there_, floor to overhead, and all the way to the starboard bulkhead from centerline."

The holograph changed dimensions almost as fast as Shepard gave the specs for it. Gomez held out an icon from his omnitool. "Centerline to bulkhead, full height, six meters longitude. Here's your control, sir."

Shepard took the holographic icon and placed it in his left palm. Then he reached down to his right leg and drew his new Spectre pistol, checked the safety, flipped it in his hand, and extended the grip toward Gomez. "But I can let you have a look at _this_ while I'm busy. I'm going to want to be able to get that and a couple other weapons maintained and serviced; make sure the Spectre office gives you the service VI for 'em, or whatever they use."

"The Spectres make their own weapons?" As Gomez took the weapon, his headband holo scrolled down into place, providing him with technical information. The man seemed to be almost be drawn into it. "Konko. Now that is one awesome pistol, sir."

"See if the Spectre Office also offers the DFR on it. If you don't have any other questions now, message me if you have any later."

Gomez saluted. "Will do, sir." He worked his omnitool with a gesture, and held the sidearm up close to his face as his ARO generated a technical thru-view on his virtual eyepiece. He turned and walked slowly back to his station.

Shepard stepped into the space defined and concealed by holography and waved his omnitool past the sensor on the crate. Its indicator turned green and the crate itself cracked open at the center, the nearer half folding open like a book.

Shepard's first impression was of a workshop. Two benches sat next to each other, cabinets above and below unfolding into place; smaller crates lifted and slid away as the side panels rotated out to 90 degrees. His Spectre-updated omnitool briefly covered his view with callouts, then kept them only on what he was looking as for as long as he looked at it.

An array of VI-driven fabrication equipment was on one side, computation on the other, both with equipment he knew, and some he only understood in principle. And not run-of-the-mill molecular fabricators, these were atomic picotech assemblers, capable of constructing purpose-built molecules in quantity and on demand. Indicators showed 50 kilos of exotic feedstocks; most of the metamaterials Shepard knew about were only 10-30% exotics by weight.

His ARO also identified computation that – while not as powerful as that of _Normandy_ – was dedicated to his tasks for security. A stellarcom device that could automatically connect to any available network within a light-week, a library of weapons and equipment for the fabrication systems from every Council race, and at every level of finish. As he scrolled quickly through the list, he watched system designs being updated in realtime, made smaller, faster, more efficient. Clearly this was the coordinated work of hundreds of civilized, technically-advanced worlds.

All of it independently powered, secured to his identity, and controlled by the vey latest in Coordinated Virtual Intelligences.

The cabinets and crates held even more surprises:

A one-meter shelf full of highly controlled and expensive chemicals, from psychoactives to explosives to afcRNA, intended to be ready payloads for molecular nanotech.

Identification snoopers for every species he knew of, and a whole lot more that he didn't.

Neurolearning libraries on practically every subject…and something he hadn't even suspected: a cognitive redaction system. With it, the limitations of an organic brain could be overcome – at least temporarily – with the ability to "install" mission-specific knowledge, and remove it when the mission was complete. (The ARO callout indicated that the system was best used with medical assistance, and that such mission-critical skills were best applied within 60 hours, and removed within 90 hours. Shepard wondered briefly if there were instructions for erasing fields of knowledge from others, or if this was even possible. His Spectre-enhanced ARO informed him that it was, though the process was not a well-controlled one.)

Three sixth-generation fusion weapons, each the size of a lunchbox, with a yield adjustable from 46 kilotons to 500 megatons. Each was modular so it could be built into seemingly harmless objects. There were also separate detonators of several configurations, quantum transmitter remote controls, and a library of delivery systems that the fabricators could build, from shoulder-mounted smart missiles to operational retail display kiosks.

He realized he was holding a hand to his chin, and that his mouth was open in astonishment.

_Looks like my world just got a lot more complicated_, he thought. _ It sure would have been nice to be introduced to this stuff by Nihlus. Or even better, by Era T'Iar._

**# # #**

Kaidan had been quietly spreading the word about his intended surprise party. The response had been good; two days out from their destination, who could reasonably turn down an excuse for a party? The difficulty had been in keeping knowledge of the preparations from the intended victim.

As _Normandy_'s new Commanding Officer, Shepard had a few things to learn quickly; as a Spectre Agent, he was in a very real sense on his own. Neurolearning could help, but was not a complete answer. There was little enough information about a novel class of ship like _Normandy_, but having already served as the ship's first XO, he knew as much about the ship's day-to-day operations as almost anyone else alive. As a Spectre already on a mission, he immediately initiated communications with the Spectre Office, with Council representatives and operatives, and with other Spectre Agents in his efforts to play catch-up.

Thus, Shepard had been spending hours in his new quarters, which was helpful for Kaidan (no worries about Shepard unexpectedly entering the room when plans were being made,) but he had been leaving his stateroom door open so anyone could come in and talk to him, which made him more aware of things going on in the ship's Mess.

Kaidan stepped into the Medical Bay. Packing crates were everywhere, from stacks in the corners, to packing material on the beds. Sargeant Crosby sat at the desk near the door, intently focused on the holographic display, a test probe in one hand, and a component – wired to the very technical-looking device on the desk – in the other. Kaidan exchanged a nod with him, but called, "Doctor Chakwas?"

"Back here," she answered. "In the Convertible Clean Room."

Kaidan stepped around the beds to the door at the forward end of the MedBay. More crates filled it almost to the overhead.

"Still getting settled in?"

"This used to be beautiful. And _empty_," she looked around the room and sighed. "Did you know about the two new dextro contractors?"

"Two?" Kaidan lit his omnitool and checked for the new arrival announcement.

"There's a quarian and a turian."

"Sorry…I only knew about the quarian."

The doctor lifted another crate down to the lab bench and twisted its handles; the top hinged open silently and she looked down into it. "I suppose that would have been enough. A few weeks ago, when we were supposed to become part of the Fifth Fleet, the Admiral of the Scout Fleet ordered all the duplex chirality gear taken out of the MedBay. I think he argued that it was more efficient, or better. Personally, I think he was just paranoid about getting turned into a dextro by accident."

Kaidan snorted a laugh.

"So now we have to _re_convert a lot of the medical gear _back_ to duplex chirality," the Doctor continued. "Equipment that had been replaced before we left Arcturus has to be traded out again." She had waved a hand at the stacks of crates before lifting a device out of its crate with a grunt of effort. "They loaded all of this before we left the Citadel, but Silas and I still have to reinstall it."

"Are we dropping it back off the next time we dock, or turning it into omnigel?"

"Different fates for different equipment. I _know_ they don't want to have to build another one of _these_." She set a piece of technical-looking equipment on the bench.

Kaidan raised his eyebrows in surprise. "I didn't realize an RNM would care about chirality."

Doctor Chakwas sighed and regarded the thing. "It shouldn't. But in VIA mode, they actually do behave differently between substrates." She stopped, looked anew at Kaidan. "Lieutenant, how do you even know what this is?"

"Spent six months at Dryden as a biotics liaison. Didn't know how much I'd like it." He pointed at the RMN. "Want me to trade that out with the current unit?"

With a look toward the main MedBay, Doctor Chakwas said, "Assuming you know where it goes, that would be wonderful. Poor Silas is out there trying to build a neutral sequencer from two wrong units."

A few minutes later, when Kaidan returned with the as-yet-unused levo-only RNM, he fitted it into the open crate, closed the lid, and used his omnitool to update the crate's RFID and signed it. "I'm sorry, Doctor; but I have to admit I have an agenda," he said.

The Doctor smiled without looking up. "Of course you do, Lieutenant. Everyone's busy putting in extra time to get things done. But how could I possibly help you?"

"I wanted to have a little surprise party for the CO. It's his first command, and he's a Spectre, and I just wanted to…you know…mark the occasion. Bring the crew together for something not official. And…_fun_."

"That certainly sounds nice, but how do you want _me_ to help...other than show up and eat cake?"

"The Commander's keeping his office door open so people can go talk to him if they want. But we need to prepare the mess for the party without him knowing it. With him in there, we won't even have the sound of a door to tell us to hide, so I wanted to use the MedBay to stage some things for the party. We'll bring them out at the last minute."

"I'd be glad to help, but as you can see, we're swamped in here."

"What if I helped you get the place rebuilt? I might even be able to get some volunteers to handle things like 'gelling the crates and things like that."

Karin Chakwas turned to face Kaidan directly. "One of the most important lessons I have learned is, 'Never turn down help.' Lieutenant, I would welcome any assistance you can offer or bring. And it would be my pleasure to help the Commander celebrate his new command."

**# # #**

Tali had to be notified twice by her VI that she was becoming a nuisance to the engineers, so she went up to the ship's Mess, keyed a request for a recovery boosting meal, and sat down at the table with a plate of pea-sized food pebbles.

Switching the chowlock mode to Trusted Source, she twisted the acceptor open and dropped a couple of the pebbles in, pushed it back in and twisted the other way. Positive pressure inside the suit was used to push the air out, and in a small tray just beyond her mouth, the two spheres rolled to a stop. With her tongue slightly wetted, she touched each in turn and drew them into her mouth like popcorn.

It was a mindless task, her left hand operating the chowlock and her right moving the pebbles from plate to helmet, but she preferred crunchy food to the pastes. (Sometimes it was nice to have a little of one with the other, using the paste as if it were icing or dip.)

As she crunched her food, she looked around. Four other humans were there, all watching some kind of human game on the aft display. Talitha Draven was standing in the shadows of the sleep pod corridor, partly bathed in the glow of her omnitool. As she looked, Tali realized that the krogan was standing a little farther forward only as the massive shape stepped close enough to catch some of the light.

Tali and Taitha had agreed to call each other by their full first names, but Tali had not had a chance to speak with the krogan personally. When they walked by, Tali extended a hand, collapsed the plate, gathering the last of the food pebbles into the resulting cuplike structure, and rose to follow them. Talitha went up the stairs, but Wrex stopped at the elevator and tapped its holographic Call key.

"Hello," Tali said as she stopped near him. "May I speak with you?"

Wrex turned and blinked in surprise. "Isn't that what you're doing?" The lift arrived, and its door slid into the floor. "Don't stop now."

"That thing you said about smashing the geth to bits…was that meant to be a joke?"

"Nah," Wrex waved a casual dismissal, "It's just what I do." He stepped into the lift, leaving room for the quarian.

"Because…remember that the geth are software. They're digital data…_bits_."

Wrex looked at her for a moment, then shrugged. "Yeah, I get it. But that wasn't what I meant."

Tali nodded and looked down silently.

Wrex tilted his head at the open space next to him. "You going down?"

Tali stepped into the lift. "Thank you."

The krogan waved a hand through the lift's _Hangar_ key and the door closed in front of them. As they descended, Wrex watched Tali for a moment. "Something on your mind?"

"Well, um, yes. But I can't think of how to say it, so I'll just ask: Krogan can get really old, can't they?"

Wrex grinned as he nodded; it was an impressive sight. "You bet. Look at me. I've seen two Great Convergences on Tuchanka. I'll be there for my third soon."

Though her VI started to scroll out an informative briefing on Tali's HUD, she asked, "What's that?"

"There's a giant planet called Kruban that orbits closer to Arlakh, and every few centuries, it eclipses it partially. But it's positioned and sized so that it doesn't completely block it out. It makes Arlakh look like a big, bright circle in the sky. They used to write all kinds of legends about what it was and what it meant…until the salarians came along with science and made it all boring." He shrugged as the lift door hissed into the floor. "But if you want, I could tell you the story of the mighty war in the sky, and how Arlakh defeats the encroachment of Kruban by engulfing it completely, eating it alive, and then _crapping_ it back out."

"Uh…" Tali hesitated.

The krogan laughed easily as he stepped out; Tali followed. "Or maybe that's as much as you need to know."

"Mm…yeah, I suppose." Tali began to follow him toward a collection of crates on the port side of the hangar.

Wrex paused just long enough to reach into one of the crates, and lifted out something that looked like a small, thick coffee table with the legs collapsed. "Well here, have a look at this," he said casually.

Tali's VI identified the weapon immediately, and put a callout on her HUD. She inhaled in surprise. "Is that really a Revenant? Where did you get it?"

"From a corpse." He gripped the thing with both hands and seemed to snap it apart, then held one part closer so she could see. "Actually, I don't know if you could call it a Revenant anymore. I had it tricked out so it fires from both barrels, over and under. And I never bother with a scope, so I had it replaced with a grenade launcher."

"Hm." Tali nodded. "Dual-fire is a good idea. If you set it up to fire from alternating barrels, you can double your time to thermax." She pointed at its top, "But mounting that grenade launcher dorsally would probably kick that thing into your face if it weren't so heavy."

Wrex nodded approvingly. "You sure know a lot about this stuff for a little engine wonk."

Tali nodded and sighed. "Thanks. Uh…yeah, the galaxy is a dangerous place, especially for me as a quarian. There are lots of aliens out there who would as soon shoot me as look at me."

"I know the feeling." Hefting the customized Revenant over his shoulder, Wrex held the other weapon toward the quarian. "And here's one for really close encounters."

Tali reached toward the weapon, but stopped herself, and simply moved her head along its length, inspecting it closely. "Wow, a Kassa. That's scary. I'm not sure I could hold it without dropping it. But I like that it'd probably stop problems before they start." She looked at it more closely, reading some of the info her VI was displaying on her HUD. "The barrel is bigger at the muzzle than the butt. Did you have the linac array made to spec?"

Wrex rotated the shotgun so she could see the other side. "Nah, I just had a Citadel Maker do it. Said I wanted the biggest _boom_ within three meters. Also doubles as a club."

Tali pointed at the weapon's muzzle. "I figured _that_. There's no other reason I can think of to make the barrel material so thick. Bet you could park a skycar on this and it'd be okay."

Wrex laughed. "Sure can. Used it as a monopod for the Revenant, and even as a wheel chock." With the two weapons in hand, he started forward. "Gotta get IFF installed, but you can come along if you want."

Tali pointed across the hangar toward the MFO. "Actually, I was coming down to see if the stuff I ordered was done. But thanks."

Wrex continued forward to where a human female was standing in front of a weapons bench.

Ash looked up at the sound of heavy footfalls. "Hey, how you doing?"

Wrex shrugged. "Bored. Lots of planning, not much fighting. But it should get good once I can sink my teeth into an enemy."

Ash assumed he was kidding, then blinked thoughtfully as she realized he probably wasn't. "Okaaaay. Well…your timing is good. I assume you're here to get your IFF. What sort of weapons do you carry?"

"Funny you should ask," Wrex said. "Funny because they probably weigh as much as you." He raised the Revenant, rotating it so she could see its side.

Ash put her hands on her hips, studied the weapon for a moment. "The mighty Revenant? Never actually seen one in person, but I'd heard about it." Considering what she knew about it, Ash grinned to herself. "High cyclic rate, low muzzle velocity, poor accuracy. 'Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.'"

Wrex nodded and considered the human. "To a professional, yeah. At this point, the looks are just to impress folks in the Terminus." He carefully set it down on the bench before her with a heavy klunk, pounded a release and lifted the service panel away. "The guts are a whole different animal."

Ash's interface visor displayed info about the weapon, putting callouts on its linacs and calculating its abilities. _This is not a stock build_, she realized as she tilted her head. "Huh. Impressive."

Wrex continued, "And for people like you, who know enough not to be impressed with a noisemaker, I'm using big accelerators."

"Urztagh," Ash read from the visor. "Don't know the brand, but it looks like it's more powerful _and_ more accurate. But rounds shot through them tend to disintegrate in transit, so the only safe place is behind it."

Wrex pointed to the attachments that looked like flash suppressors on both barrels. "And so…"

Ash nodded. "Yeah, I get it. Linac extensions with VI stabilizers. But if you weren't krogan, you could hardly pick the beast up."

"But I _am _krogan." He waved carelessly toward the bench and the weapons now on it. "Whatever. But I want to watch what you do so I can undo it later. I wouldn't want you to forget after we bag Saren."

Ash lit her omnitool, requested the IFF add-on from the bench VI, and selected a device from the bench tray. She frowned without looking up at the towering krogan.

Wrex noticed the human's silence. "Remember we have an enemy in common: The turians...all of them, not just that _one_ turian."

"Hm," Ash grunted noncommittially. "The IFF can be installed as software or hardware. I usually install both, for redundancy, but if you uninstall the software, the hardware you can just throw away." She picked up a pair of waldoforceps, used them to lift the rice-grain-sized IFF from the microfacturer tray, and held it up for the krogan to see. "Really simple to take out; just crack the weapon and pick this off, throw it away." She placed it carefully on a socket in the weapon's WINC node.

"What about the software?"

Ash waved an exact gesture at her omnitool, pinched an icon and held it over her shoulder. "Run this."

Wrex took the icon, touched it to the tech appliance on his belt until it disappeared.

Ash didn't look up from the bench as she began installing the IFF software. "Don't run it until after your contract is over; it'll let me know if you do."

Wrex nodded. "Fair enough; your house, your rules." _And if you betray my trust, I have other weapons._

***** Glossary *****

AAAS: Alliance Association for the Advancement of Science

AFM: Atomic Force Microscope; a hybrid device developed in the 1980s allowing both observation and manipulation of individual atoms. VI-enhanced AFMs are frequently used in modification and repair of nanotech devices.

ARO: Augmented Reality Overlay

ASO: Alliance Standards Organization

CO: Commanding Officer

DFR: Digital Fabrication Rights

First Tier Catalog: MFO slang for objects that can be printed wholly from a single, complete pattern; usually directly from a design company with logged hours of usage by NGOs [like the various Manufacturer's Organizations, ASO, IEEE, AAAS, etc.], and unofficial groups like the Maker community.

HSIVI: Human Social Interaction Virtual Intelligence

HUD: Heads-Up Display

IEEE: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers

IFF: Identification Friend or Foe

LRSA: Long Range Scan and Analysis

MFO: Master Fabrication Officer

NfoX: Information Exchange; a technology/protocol used by research organizations and universities for scientific research data collection and dissemination. Pioneered on Thessia, popularized in the Alliance by Husseinomica (part of the Venus Project 2.0) after the Prothean discovery on Mars, acquired by Google in 2073.

NGO: Non-Government Organization (incorporated or privately owned, usually not a for-profit corporation.)

Pegasi: plural of the corpmarked "Pegasus" GMO flying horse.

PIRAD: Parallel Isolinear Redactive Array Device; removable storage that can also function as secondary system memory.

RFID: Radio Frequency Identification

RNM: Ranged Nanoscale Manipulator; a medical device like an AFM, but that operates over millimeters remote from the target. Used to manipulate deep tissue without disrupting intermediary tissues (e.g., brain surgery without blood, heart repair without a saw.)

RSFN: Rannoch Survivors Flotilla Network

Thermax: Thermal maximum; in the context of small arms, it refers to overheat.

VIA: VI Autonomous; a temporary operational mode for conventional VI-controlled devices

WINC: Weapons Intelligence Network Computing

YSM: [Judy] Yu, [Matthew] Salazar, [Steven] Marsh, authors of an intelligence algorithm designed to interpolate information from non-linear and seemingly unrelated facts.


	29. Chapter 29: Therum, Approach

A/N – Sorry for the protracted silence. Had a rare and wonderful opportunity, and instead bought the wrong house at the wrong time. Lots of expensive repairs, lots of things to move out of pods and keep out of the way until they're done.

I promise I won't let anyone down (myself included) by giving up on this story. I wish I could write something as educational and enjoyable as HPMOR (I'm inserting as much rationalist stuff as I can,) but I think it's important to be as true to the Mass Effect story as possible.

Keeping the details as much in mind as possible is almost as important as getting to the Big Finish. And I don't mean defeating Sovereign; there's a lot of story to tell…and **fix**.

Once again, shout-out to LuckyFK for the original art of asari Commando Era T'Iar, available for your viewing pleasure on DeviantART dot com.

And for clarity, that's T'Iar, not T'Lar.

*** Therum: Approach ***

With two trouser pockets full of Optimeal biscuits (he'd found that six was equivalent to a meal,) Shepard noticed Jenkins sitting at one of the nearby tables. He ambled over and stopped across the table from the younger man, who was mostly watching a vidmail from his family, and occasionally eating from the tray of food in front of him.

"Hey, Jenkins. Got a few minutes?"

Richard smiled, pausing the playback. "Sure." He pointed at the tray. "Have you tried the risotto, sir? It's really good."

Shepard produced one of the biscuits from a pocket, regarding it with a hint of resignation. "Hardly ever have time for _recreational_ eating. But I'll remember that." He pocketed the biscuit as he sat down. "Your family still okay?"

Richard smiled. "Yes, _sir_." He waved his fork at the holostand on the table between them. "Today's news is pretty good. They're getting things cleaned up. Dad and mom's house was fine, Suzie _and_ Wilson could both see the big ship, but weren't close enough to be attacked. SAR found a dozen more survivors in the tower shelters yesterday."

"Think you could help more if you were there?"

"Sir?" Richard looked stunned.

"Do you think you could help more if you were there? I know Trident is sending in a new unit, but they haven't formed it up yet. I was thinking you might like it if I tried to get you in. You interested?"

Jenkins' face brightened with an open-mouthed smile. "You bet I am, sir. But wouldn't it look bad for me only being posted here for a month?"

"I can't imagine why. Considering what happened there, I think it'd be completely understandable. If you want, I'll put a special request in with the new CO. Besides, we already got the one survivor transferred to _Normandy_. Seems only fair we should give back."

"That would be really great, sir, but I don't know why I'd rate."

Shepard paused, looked away. "Well, you sort of asked to be sent home."

Richard's expression fell. "I _what_?"

Shepard held up a reassuring hand. "Don't worry. I'm your CO, and it's my call what you meant by that. You didn't seem like the type to bail, so I thought I'd…treat it as if it was the stress of the moment talking. The doctor at the Citadel clinic blurred it with some therapy. Clearly _you've_ forgotten it. But you did say it twice, so _I_ take it seriously. I thought there might be another way to get you home without opening _that_ can of worms. I've already composed the RFT, but I gave reasons about how you're a native, you know more about the planet, I thought you would be able to do more good there, we had already absorbed Williams…and so on. And I wanted to talk with you first and find out if you'd be okay with a transfer to Sargon."

"Uh…well, sure…I'd _love_ it. But I didn't want to do anything to put _you_ out, sir."

"Not even a little. I know your family is important to you, and you'd be a lot happier there with them after that attack. Personally, I think it was a fluke. And now that Saren's on the run, I doubt he'll be going back to Eden Prime.

"However, I noticed you didn't have an adverse reaction to fighting the geth, and that's what we're expecting on this next drop. I can also leave you on Alenko's team, if you'd prefer…but I don't want to press my luck."

"Sir, if you're offering me the chance to stay in the Alliance _and_ be close to my family, I'll take it. But if it'll make your life easier for me to stay, I'll do that."

Shepard nodded once. "Okay, good to know. I appreciate your attitude, but I'll send that RFT today. It might be a while before we get approval. Depending on how things go on Therum, it might be just a couple of days. But it might be a couple of weeks, too.

"In fact, I'll see if they can let you remote in and start getting things set up there. But don't get all figmo on me; skipper's going-away present to us was an M35 APC, and I'm assigning you to Gomez until your transfer actually comes in. Get that thing all fired up and double-checked so we can use it for tomorrow's drop."

"Hey, that's great, sir. Thanks. I know Doyle's been super busy for days now with the new contractors, and the new ship, and the dextro switchover stuff. You need that M35 to be Ground Combat ready, I'm your man."

"And this'll give you more experience in fabrication, which will probably come in handy during the reconstruction work on Eden Prime." Shepard nodded decisively. "Good. Sounds like we're all GO with this." He rose from the table. "If you have any other concerns, message me."

Richard was instantly on his feet, saluting. "Yes, sir. Will do, sir." He broke into a huge grin again. "And thanks a lot, sir. This is really great, and I appreciate all you did to…make it possible. And uh…about the 93(g), sir…"

Shepard returned the salute. "Don't give it another thought, Jenkins. I know you do your best."

**# # #**

Shepard was sitting at his desk installing a UI upgrade to his brain appliance when he heard a "_foomp_," and the overhead lights went out. He paused, listening. The engines were still whirring steadily along. His desk array was still running. Nobody was calling for help.

His ARO explained, **Frame 22 starboard bus error; systems power reroute in progress.**

He looked toward the door in time to see the light of an omnitool torch playing across the wall outside. A voice asked, "Commander?"

"In here," he replied. "Is something seriously wrong?"

A heavy sigh. "I sure hope not, sir. Greico and I are working on that power bus, and I think there's something SNAFU in the system, either in the MedBay, or in the SPC. Unbalanced load or control failure."

"It failed while you were servicing it, or you two just that fast on the job?"

"We're just that good, sir."

"That's the spirit." Shepard rose with a nod and an encouraging smile, illuminating his gauntlet as he did. "I assume nobody's hurt?"

The engineer appeared in the doorway, his omnitool casting an orange glow across his face and torso. "No, sir, but it looks like it took out power to most of the middeck." A blue-white flash threw a shadow into sharp relief on the bulkhead behind the engineer. "I just wanted to make sure you were unaffected until we get it all straightened out." Scraping and pounding sounds came from around the corner as the man pointed toward Shepard's desk. "Looks like your DCE is still good, sir?"

Shepard knew what the man was really saying, even if the engineer didn't know that he did. It was a way of keeping busybody senior personnel out of the way while the staff officers and ratings handled technical issues. He had used it himself in the past; finding that he was now on the receiving end made him smile privately.

"Looks okay to me," Shepard sat again and turned back to his desk, with a dozen glowing holographic tiles active. He realized it would probably take them a few minutes to fix whatever it was, and returned to his inspection of the upgrade review.

The "brain upgrade" had come from the device manufacturer, but Alliance techs had checked it over before releasing it to deployed users because there were perhaps a million soldiers using similar neurological enhancement. While still referred to as an "appliance," it was actually a coordinated swarm of nanobots providing redundancy in critical areas, allowing brain activity to continue even if neurons were damaged.

With his grandfather's help shortly after original installation, software modifications and development work had integrated swarm functions with his implant. A neurohacker group he'd been following had advised using six or even seven times as many as the original designer intended; being relatively young and rebellious at the time, he had put himself through eleven courses of the installation before he could stand it no more.

(The process required using a backswing in a 0.5-1.1 gee field and remaining inverted while filling his sinuses with a nanobot-laden paste. He'd had to breathe through his mouth for about 30 minutes, but with a session of his favorite PVR game and a nose clip, he spent a weekend repeating the process for an hour at a time to make sure he got the most from the stuff. Technically, it was illegal for him to print up eleven doses while only paying for two, but he wasn't going to let that stop him from getting the swarm "correctly installed".)

The resulting "cracked" swarm made the implant capable of "simulating" the acceleration he used in combat, allowing his brain to briefly "overclock." The result was a few seconds of controllable acceleration, which made the world seem to run slower. Being a teen, he invested a lot of time in studying and experimenting with what seemed another strange a new power, and kept the results largely to himself.

Though it had always come at a price (splitting headaches at 30% acceleration when he first began experimenting with it,) the latest upgrade included a patch that looked like it would reduce or even eliminate the headache that 6x combat acceleration usually caused, and eliminate the "head full of water" sensation that almost always accompanied 4x. It also included a new library of heuristics that would allow him to delegate various anticipation and predictive tasks (such as seeing a representation of the path of a moving object to assist with avoiding or intercepting it.)

Shepard's ARO displayed a progress tree that grew as each of the nanobots was updated, and facilitated the faster upgrade of other nearby 'bots. It showed that almost 200 of the 'bots had failed the upgrade, and another 43 had failed completely beyond use. Though these numbers were in the "rounding error" range, their respective areas were temporarily reassigned, and replacement units were dispatched from nearby nodes.

It would take about an hour for them to be moved carefully into place, and probably a week longer that that for the failed units to be dismantled and rebuilt. After making his own modifications to the "appliance" – about areas of his brain to which the patch was or was not allowed access – it was reassuring to know exactly how the swarm was doing.

As the progress tree continued to grow, Shepard noticed that the engineer had not moved, nor did he seem to be doing anything. _Notice the unusual_, he remembered, _because the unusual is almost always significant._ It was one of the more memorable lessons of his N6 training.

Unconsciously, he checked his hip, feeling the weight of the new pistol on his thigh hardpoint. Out of his combat armor, it was his only firearm, but not his only weapon.

While waiting for the upgrade to complete, and without looking up from the desk, he gestured for his omnitool's "combat radar." The sensor showed about 10-12 people in the main mess on his ARO, which was not out of the ordinary, but they were all moving around, which meant no one was _eating_.

He gestured for his combat suit's rear view before realizing he was not wearing it. Watching the motion in the mess revealed nothing about what they were doing. His suit mics were also unavailable.

Subtly touching his sidearm as he rose from the desk, Shepard approached and opened a drawer on the wall by his bed. The engineer was still standing by the door, looking at his omnitool when Kaidan, omnitool also aglow, leaned his head in and asked, "Hey, Commander. You got a few minutes?"

Shepard nodded. "Good timing." Touching the drawer closed, he turned and moved aft.

Kaidan murmured, "Thanks, Pakti. Go give Greico a hand, will you?"

"Yes, sir." The man moved away, taking his little bit of light with him.

Shepard led the way out of his quarters. "So what's going on?"

Kaidan sighed as they walked into the darkened Mess, using his omnitool torch to light the floor ahead of them. "I assume you knew that we were slated to join the Scout Fleet after shakedown, so we got orders to have all the medical equipment switched to levo-amino compatibility _only_."

_Crap_, Shepard thought. "I _do _remember that, but I thought the switchover wasn't complete. Also thought I'd seen dextro supplies on the manifest when we were at the Citadel."

"You did, but there are still some things we didn't get switched back. The replacements they gave us will help, but it's not all we need long-term if we'll be operating as a Spectre vessel for the Council." He shook his head. "Anyway, the problem is in the new mix of gear we have in the MedBay. I put the request in through Trident, but they'd have to build the stuff we need. The gear they took out at Arcturus was sent back to the Citadel."

"The Citadel…that we just left? Why didn't they put it back in while we were there?" Passing the portside ladder, with a large, open service panel and a pair of engineers working on its exposed innards. They stepped into the MedBay, its autodoor open.

"It hadn't arrived yet. It's just destined for." He glanced at his omnitool. "But the good news is that it should get there in…uh, probably the next couple of hours."

"Unbelievable." Shepard shook his head. "Never enough time to do it right, but always enough time to do it over?"

Kaidan shrugged. "SOP."

Shepard looked up as Doctor Chakwas looked up from where she was working in the Convertible Clean Room. She looked concerned. "Oh, Lieutenant, you went and got him? I'm sorry, Commander, I hadn't meant to disturb you. I think we have the situation under control here, but it _would_ be nice if we could go back to the Citadel as soon as we finish our current mission. The dual-mode medical equipment was routed there, and I'm concerned about medical needs of the dextro crew…sorry, I mean _contractors_."

"Yes, Alenko was just telling me about it." Shepard noticed Kaidan had been tapped by one of the techs and called away. "It sounds like there's nothing they couldn't swap out in a couple of hours. It'll take us longer to get there than to do the actual work. Is that your understanding?"

"Yes. And if you're planning to take us back to the Citadel immediately after we finish at our next destination, there's a lot of catching up we _won't_ have to do. It will save Silas and me over a week of technical work."

"All right. It'll take couple of days to get there, but it will also mean we'll be at the asari embassy, and won't have to babysit an archaeologist." Shepard operated his omnitool; the soft indigo glow provided some general light in the MedBay as he did. "And the Council may want to find out what this Matriarch Benezia's daughter knows, in which case the Citadel seems a safer place than a dig. I'm sure there are commercial flights to Thessia, too."

"That's true," Karin nodded, waving toward the two engineers. "Well, with the Lieutenant's tech team on the case, I suspect they'll have it all sorted quickly enough; it seems to have only affected lighting. I'm glad we had a chance to talk, Commander; if we can expect to have the original equipment back within a few days, that will change what we have to rebuild or get from the MFO. We'll keep holding things together here until we get back to the Citadel." She turned back toward the room, then looked over her shoulder again. "Is there anything else, Commander?"

Noticing that Kaidan had left the room, Shepard asked, "Doctor, how well do you know the Lieutenant?"

She shrugged casually. "Alenko? I've never worked with him before this, but he has an impressive service record; over a dozen special commmendations." She tilted her head. "I thought you had known him for several years."

"I have, but I have only my own perspective."

The short-haired doctor nodded. "He tends to keep to himself. As CFS, I'd advise he interact more with others, though that could be because of the headaches. It's not always easy being an L2."

"I've never actually talked with him about the tech. What's that got to do with it?"

"Well, most biotics today get the L3 implants. Lieutenant Alenko was wired with the old L2 configuration, which was when they were still trying to figure biotics out. Sometimes there are complications."

"Such as…?"

"Severe mental disabilities, insanity, crippling physical pain…there's a whole list of horrific side effects. Kaidan's lucky, he just gets migraines."

Shepard shook his head. "If you can call that lucky. Migraines can be _debilitating_."

Doctor Chakwas held up a hand. "Not to worry, I've _just _started him on Acutrazane. It should significantly reduce the number and intensity of the attacks, and it leverages his L2 wiring to—" She cut herself off at the sound of the door opening.

Kaidan rounded the corner into the MedBay, and looked up from the circle of light his omnitool was creating on the floor ahead of him. "Commander, got a situation in the SPC."

Shepard took a step toward the door. "Looks urgent. Can we handle it now?"

"I expect so, sir. If you'll come with me?" Kaidan led the way through the still-darkened mess, keeping his omnitool torchlight focused on the floor as he walked; it was easier to avoid the equipment and dining tables. "It looks like the reverse chirality is causing more problems than expected. The sleep pod we tried to set aside for the two contractors who need it apparently didn't like the switchover, and took itself offline." They stepped up into the Sleep Pod Corridor, Shepard noticing there was no one else in it with them.

"Once it was offline, it looks like the controller tried to execute an auto-reset, and doing so took down the bus." Kaidan stopped in front of the pod at the top of the steps, his light aimed down the accessway. "Probably the dextro profile had an incompatible attribute." Light still aimed at the floor to their left, Kaidan reached into the open pod, lifting out what looked like a 25-centimeter circular tech board. "Here; can you hold this?"

The motion of Kaidan handing it to Shepard caused his omnitool torchlight to shine on the next pod; the reflection was briefly dazzling. Shepard had just enough time to notice that the thing was quite warm. "Feels like it really overheated."

"It's actually at just the right temperature," Kaidan said, "but it was quite a _surprise_." As he said "surprise," the overhead lights snapped back on, and Shepard realized he was holding a small pizza.

Kaidan had reached into the pod with his left hand, grabbed a handful of the "wires," and lifted them as high as he could; Shepard realized they were party streamers only as the biotic threw them on his CO's head, scattering glitter into the air.

A chorus of voices cheered, "Surprise!"

The mess was almost full of crew. Holographic decorations and effects included a small fountain on each of the tables, a plaid-colored terrier doing back flips (a currently popular extranet meme,) and an ongoing shower of gold and silver sparkles that looked like slow-motion rain. The lights dimmed again, and spotlights and lasers wandered around the room, making it look like the dance floor of a club.

Recalling the similar party he had organized for his own Captain, Shepard smiled. _Anderson wasn't picking the crew for himself, he was picking them for me_, he realized.

Kaidan's hand was suddenly at his back. "Go on, try it." The dark-haired man pointed at the pizza. "I designed it for you myself. Pineapple and Canadian bacon with tripe pineapple and Canadian bacon. I call it, 'Shepard's Pie.'" He grinned. "Get it?"

Shepard raised a brow as he made eye contact. "So you're saying I'm a pineapple?"

Before Kaidan could react, someone started singing, "For he's a jolly good fellow," and was quickly joined by the rest of the crew. Shepard did his best not to look embarrassed until he realized he was holding a potential distraction: He rolled the pizza Swedish-style and devoured it at a pace he hoped would let him finish before the song ended. As some of the crew noticed what he was doing, they tried to sing faster, and the song devolved quickly into a chaotic mush, spiced with laughter.

Club music started to play from an ad-hoc omnitool network; as more crew joined it, the volume was kept constant while the room seemed to fill more evenly with the sound.

More pizzas, in a variety of types, were scattered across the tables; people began to pull them apart, grabbing cups for drinks as they did.

As Shepard thought about it, the pieces of this orchestration fell into place. Alenko taking him from his stateroom to the MedBay had been coordinated with the crew putting up decorations. Once they were set up, they had to get him to the end of the Sleep Pod corridor…still in darkness so he wouldn't see them lurking in the mess. _Looks like I was a little too paranoid this time_, he thought.

Wrex ambled into the mess from the lift, looking like he expected to be annoyed or ignored (or both.) Instead, he was handed a bucket of beer and three slices of pizza on a plate, and surrounded by younger crew members.

Kaidan made his way through the party to the krogan, who stood there sniffing the human food uncertainly. Turning away from his groupies, the krogan held the plate of pizza toward Kaidan. "Is this safe to eat?"

"It should be safe, but it might not be meaty enough for you."

"I heard you say the name of the food," Wrex gestured to the PET on his belt, "but my _thing_ is telling me that a _shepherd's pie_ is supposed to be something else. Are you sure this is what you think it is?"

Kaidan sighed. "It's a sort of joke. The Commander's name isn't _spelled_ the same, but it _sounds_ the same. And _this_," he pointed to the pizza on the plate, "is actually called a pizza_ pie_, though more often, just 'a pizza.' But he likes pineapple, and so this is a way of identifying _this_ kind of pizza pie as _Shepard's_ pizza pie. So it's _Shepard's pie_, get it?"

Wrex thought for a few seconds, then shook his head. "On Tuchanka, if you have to explain a joke, it was stillborn. I know you say something similar."

"Yeah, well…" Kaidan shrugged. "I think I'd say it didn't survive translation."

The krogan nodded. "Keep trying. You'll get it." He pushed past, playfully bashing his right shoulder into the human's.

**# # #**

Shepard found he was thirsty after his pizza-eating stunt.

He ordered a couple of piña coladas and sipped one while scanning the partiers for Corporal Jenkins. He saw the Corporal was still near where Wrex had been fan-mobbed by the younger crew, looking at the aliens from a distance.

Walking over, he held the glass in front of Richard. "Here. I owe you this. For bravery under fire, but mostly getting clobbered by the geth and surviving. Thanks."

The younger man took the glass, looked at it uncertainly. "Uh…thank _you_, sir. I don't drink."

"You don't drink _alcohol_," Shepard clarified. "I know that. This is just pineapple and coconut juices. Tastes like a piña colada without the proof rating."

Richard took a sip. "Hm. That's okay stuff." He drank more generously.

"Don't drink it too fast or everyone will know it's a virgin," Shepard advised. He raised his glass. "Here's to the Cockadoodle Cross."

Richard smiled with a hint of embarrassment, raised his glass to Shepard's and clinked it. "The Cockadoodle Cross," he repeated.

Shepard continued, "You can't win it posthumously…and because it's always better to get your _ass_ handed to you than your _head_."

"Yeah. Um…" Richard looked thoughtful. "Thanks again, sir." He fidgeted. "I'm sorry I got shot."

Shepard shook his head. "You should be; I've _never_ been shot." He added a sardonic look, and then clinked his glass to Jenkins'. "Glad we got _that_ straightened out. So be ready to pay it back to someone. If you haven't gotten a neurolearning for Combat First Aid, do it." He nodded once, looked over his shoulder. "Which reminds me; Gunny Williams is a Battlefield Angel. She can help you earn your SOCM…if you can match up some time before you ship out."

Richard looked across the mess at Ashley, who appeared to be flirting with Kaidan.

Shepard noticed a wistful look in the young Corporal's expression. He added, "Yeah…now the good news is that you can get something going because you're going to be in another unit. The bad news is that you'll have to maintain that relationship remotely." He turned to the left and started to step away, clapping Richard on the shoulder as he did. "But you'll never know if you don't ask. It's all up to you."

**# # #**

Tali'Zorah was standing in the tech bench near the Commander's quarters. Though it had been pressed into service as a drinks dispensary, it was still a place where she felt some degree of comfort. Nearly all of the instruments and tools had been secured for the party, but the effect was to surround her with technology. The dispensers were standard countertop fabricator kiosks, so mostly the crew tapped whatever they wanted; Tali had found a small white cloth and was having fun talking with them while pretending to be a bartender.

Garrus sidled up to the bench, leaning on it as if it were actually a bar. "So do they serve anything decent here?" It was a turian pick-up line so old that it had been reduced to a cliché. When the quarian turned to him, he was briefly unsure that she understood he was trying to be amusing.

Tali's "harem" of virtual intelligences had picked out the turian when he was still several meters distant, tracked his movements as he meandered his way over, analyzed his body language, and provided its recommendation of a drink before he had even leaned on his elbow.

Tali's hesitation was only her uncertainty about what drink to offer him in reply.

Her VI advised, **The counter-idiom uses the drink chosen as a way of expressing anything from flaming, urgent interest to outright hostility.**

The table of drinks and their meanings disappeared with a flinger flick; she chose to play the ingénue. "As the only other dextro here, I can tell you that all the drinks I have tested seem to taste of _sucrose_ _alcohol_. They may be trying to kill us."

Garrus nodded. "Ah, but what a way to go." He waved toward the tables. "You know that they put out some dextro snacks, right? Fendus and bosri, and…uh, I forget what else. It's chilled, and they have some other sauce if you want it."

Tali nodded. "I'm okay. But thanks." She plopped the rag atop the "bar" and gave it a wipe. "So how'd you end up here?"

Garrus looked up intently. "I'm hunting Saren. He's either gone mad, or turned traitor. I have good intel and lots of combat experience. If I can, I'll put a round through his _spiritless_ brain myself." His fringe contracted. "_That_ would be a very good way to explain to C-Sec why I left."

Tali's VI noticed the nuances of the fringe motion, and tagged the turian's head: **Indicates unconscious embarrassment, emotional conflict**, it added.

Garrus continued, "How did _you_ end up here?"

"I have lots of experience and knowledge about the geth, Saren's allies," the quarian stopped wiping the bartop and looked at the turian soberly. "I also had the evidence that got Saren kicked out of the Spectres."

Garrus flinched, startling Tali. "_You_ did that?"

Tali took a step back and clutched the rag in both hands. "Um…well, yes. But he tried to kill me!"

Garrus raised both open claws to collar height. "I'm not blaming you; that's excellent! Well done!"

One of Tali's VIs informed her that the turian's gesture was one of reassurance. "_Oh_…then…thank you." She looked aside, almost embarrassed. "Uh…I didn't realize it was important at the time…at least not for _that_." A tiny 2D image appeared on Tali's omnitool gauntlet; she held it up for Garrus to see. "They took me right to the Council Chambers. After they saw it, the Council made him a Spectre."

"Now _that's_ a good day," Garrus said. "I wish I could have been there."

"Really?" Tali brightened. "Because I PVRed it. You want it?" She flicked her fingers quickly and held out a glowing holographic icon.

"I'd love it." Garrus tilted his head in surprise. "You had that at the ready, or are you just that fast?"

The quarian flicked her fingers again, cycling through other icons. "I'm just that fast," she said as the original PVR icon reappeared. "Comes from living in a smart suit. You learn its features, add other ones you want, get rid of things you don't. It'll help you if you let it." She proffered the icon again; Garrus accepted the token and the PVR link downloaded to his omnitool.

He nodded to her. "Thank you. This should be good."

"Would I be allowed to post it publicly? I was being pretty subtle about recording until the other Alliance soldiers started congratulating him."

Garrus pointed at Tali's omnitool. "Sure you can. You recorded it in an open session of the Council. Emergency or not, it's a public record. You might get a lot of hits from the Alliance with your looking-over-his-shoulder perspective." He dreiffed his fringe at her. "You have a unique view on an historic event. You might even consider contacting a news agency; they might have a bounty on something like that.'"

**# # #**

Wrex had found he enjoyed the limelight of attention he was getting from the younger crewmembers – a few of whom had not been offworld or actually met any non-humans – but eventually went in search of a drink. He approached the tech bench where the quarian and the turian were talking.

Pouring himself a glass of whatever was in the first dispenser, opened his mouth and threw the contents in. Smacking his lips and shrugging, he tried the second and third before grumbling, "Guess they're not serving drinks for grown-ups."

Garrus turned and pointed at the dispensers. "Don't just try the default; you can select from a variety of drinks; just spin through the selector. If you can't find what you're looking for, I'm sure they can whip up some battery acid if it'll make you feel better," he said.

Wrex looked where the turian had pointed. "Aw, you're just saying that."

Garrus shrugged. "Yeah, I am, actually."

Tali quickly tried to change the subject, "Mister Wrex? Uh…I can't eat it, of course, but did you like the…um...Shepard's Pie?"

The krogan turned his left eye toward the quarian. "You keep calling me 'mister' Wrex and I'll have to put you over my knee and paddle you. I'll be your friend, but you have to talk to me like I really am. I'm _Wrex_. Just plain old Wrex, okay?" He pointed across the room to where there were still some pizza slices. "As for _that_ stuff, it was too limp. Didn't put up a fight at all. But _you_ might like it. It seemed kind of puny to me."

As they stood there talking, Greg Adams walked over, carrying a small decorative bowl filled with a reddish paste. "Hey there. It sounds like you're talking about the food. Zhang said you had inhaled the pizza and called it flavorless." He raised the bowl. "So I whipped up some of my own personal mix: I call it "pepper spray." Most folks say it's too hot, but I think it's great. Zhang says he thinks your head will melt, but if you wanted something with a little _sparkle_, I thought I'd let you try it."

"Hm. Maybe." Wrex leaned down and sniffed at it. "Smells busy." Before anyone had a chance to react, he opened his mouth slightly, and a two-foot-long toungue shot out, adhered to the bowl, and yanked it back into his mouth.

The ceramic shattered and crunched loudly as the krogan chewed; Adams' mouth dropped open in disbelief. "Where did _that_ come from?"

Garrus sounded amused, "You didn't know that krogan come equipped with party favors?"

Wrex continued to chomp noisily. "Not bad," he nodded approval. "It's got a nice flavor to it, but you should have brought a whole tray of them."

Adams was still gaping in disbelief. "Most people don't eat the bowl."

Wrex turned an eye to the engineer. "Oh…I forgot. You humans use tools for everything, don't you? Even to _eat_." He continued to chew, seemed to be considering the flavor again. "Hm, that's real ceramic. Well, no harm done, and it aids digestion."

Tali leaned toward Adams, but pointed at Wrex. "You might order up a few more of those. I think he likes them."

"Especially the bowls," Wrex agreed. "Make sure you order up the same bowl." He patted his belly, adjusted one side of it. "Rrgh. Yeah, another two or three of those, and I'll bet I can work up a real good crap."

# # #

The music softened as the evening continued; Shepard was glad to have some time to meet his crew. More congratulated him on being a Spectre than on assuming his first command, though as he'd had time to think about it, the Spectre appointment probably was a more newsworthy event.

He noticed a small cleanerbot emerge from its floor-level alcove and begin whirring its way around the Mess, picking up the last of the debris as he stepped into his quarters. His ARO informed him that the Mako had been fully inspected, commissioned, and was ready to start charging; LRSA was in Active Standby, and the Frame-level bus failure drill had been successfully passed.

He smirked. _Of course it was a drill_.

Considering they were landing tomorrow, he selected an ample six hours of sleep with a neurolearning refresh for ground combat operations, and realized he still had a couple of hours before he needed to start it. He walked to his desk; the displays lit as he approached.

A magenta-colored sparkle drifted from his head to his uniform. Realizing he probably still had more celebratory debris in his hair, he brushed his fingers across his scalp; more sparkles settled to the desk.

_I really need a shower_, he realized. _But I haven't even checked myself out in the new armor_.

On the other hand, Era T'Iar had seemed confident that the transition to his new armor would be seamless…

**# # #**

"The human Alliance officially made its records on you available to us several months ago, when you were first identified as a potential candidate," the asari Spectre manipulated the interface with a spin here, a flick there. With a confident smile, she looked over the console at the wholly vulnerable Shepard. "Though you are our first human, you're not the first military professional we've had to transition into the Spectres," she said. "I was looking forward to talking with you."

Shepard qualified her statement, "Assuming I wasn't a raving fan of _Updater_."

The asari's expression was one of indulgence. "True. While it would have been hard to know the value of such a conversation beforehand, it would be remarkable if someone of such temperament would make a good Spectre Agent."

"Hm. I suppose not," Shepard said. "Though I'm also not sure why you'd want to talk with _me_. I was originally slated to train with a turian named Nihlus…"

The asari smiled quietly to herself. "Actually, it is less a training than an evaluation. The Council must have been impressed."

"I'm sure they were, but I'm not sure it was for good reasons. Nihlus was badly injured and…" Shepard frowned, "the mission objectives…were not achieved." His gaze wandered around the ceiling for a moment. "So I've gotten no training…and I'm feeling a little underprepared to bring another Spectre back in."

Spectre T'Iar looked up with some surprise. She muted her omitool's audio and read the briefing as one of her VIs compiled it. "Another Spectre? That's not unheard of…but it is rather unusual."

"So here's my opportunity. I get to talk with another Spectre about how to accomplish it."

The briefing displayed on the asari's omnitool was as grim as it was concise; it told her about the attack on Eden Prime, the role of _Normandy_ and of Shepard's fireteam. _This is no pawn sacrifice by the Council_, she thought. _He is already a hero among his own people._ "That will depend on the Agent. May I ask who it is?"

"Saren Arterius."

She looked up from her omnitool. "Truly? That may be a challenge," she said slowly. "Has the Council provided you with a detailed dossier?"

"Not that I'm aware of. But I was just given command of the Alliance's new frigate; I was the XO until an hour ago. They'll probably forward it to me there." He smiled to himself. "Can I recruit _you_ as a contractor for this mission? I would welcome the assistance of someone who has been a Spectre for longer than I've been _breathing_."

The console prompted her noisily. "Just a moment…would you make a fist with your left hand and right foot for this next pass?" The platform tilted up and slightly to the right as she spoke. "And close your eyes."

Shepard did as asked; the noises coming from the scan ring changed noticeably. "So do you know Agent Arterius? Is there anything you know that might help me?"

The asari paused to think. "I mostly know _of_ him. He's something of a legend. The name Saren alone carries weight, you might say. I think you would also say he is a 'lone wolf.' When he works with others, he delegates very specific tasks, sets up his contractors to steer his objective to him, or to wear the objective down. But it is always he who delivers the…_coup de grâce_."

The platform continued to hum and whir as it moved, changing Shepard's orientation, rescanning, moving again.

She continued, "I know there was one instance where Saren _hired the target_ to make a kill, hired a contractor to _be_ the kill, and then imploded the whole building. It was highly effective; he managed to wipe out nearly all of the actual target's organization with the other conditions he had set up. He is a brilliant strategist. Do not underestimate him."

The scanner finished its work, returning the platform its horizontal-flat orientation.

Shepard raised his eyebrows, looking away in thought. "Thanks for the warning; I'll try to keep that in mind. But what about the contractor posing as a target? How big was the building? Did anyone else get hurt?"

The Spectre nodded slowly. "Almost a thousand people died in collateral damage." T'Iar looked up from the console. "Feel free to put on your underlayer; if you still have time, I'll fit you with Spectre armor."

"Absolutely." Shepard rolled off the table, crossed to the other platform and began to dress.

Agent T'Iar continued, "That incident was fairly early in Saren's career. The Council became more specific about acceptable losses when tasking him. It worked for almost a decade, until Saren stopped caring about secondary objectives. But he can accomplish things that seem impossible. The batarian hegemony used to be much more powerful until the Council told him to break it." She paused. "But you did not hear that from me."

"Really…?" _Maybe this guy isn't all bad_, he thought.

"As for getting _my_ assistance, I'm not sure I could help you. I would probably be too much of a distraction, especially to that Marine soldier."

Shepard frowned, thinking about how small and crowded the ship already was. "Hm…good point. But I would still like to keep in touch, use you as a mentor."

"Of course, Agent." One of Shepard's VIs noted the acceptance, polled the area for the appropriate Displa**ID**, and recorded the points of contact.

Underwear, socks, and omnitool sleeve on, glove liners in one hand, Shepard looked up at her again. "Getting back to the armor, will my current bioarmor layer be used, or do you have something better?"

"Human bioarmor is sufficient, but we have something _potentially_ better: An Inertial layer. It performs much the same function, but can provide extra strength like an exoskeleton, and better protection against projectiles that make it past your shields." As Shepard folded and compacted his Alliance armor into a carryable configuration, the asari adjusted her view of the information provided by her VI. She continued, "The drawback is that it will not fully integrate with your Alliance SCI, but the latest release now has an integrated DCE. Also, because it is replacing two layers with one, it will reduce your kinetic inefficiency, increase stealth, and increase your ease of motion."

Spectre Agent T'Iar had ordered a case for Shepard's "old" armor; it had been placed on the end on the second platform during the scan. After arranging the folded sections inside, he tossed his DCE underlayer in and snapped it closed. "Sounds impressive; I like it already. What do you need from me?"

The asari looked at him with an odd sort of smile; it made her look both sad and intrigued. "Come with me." She turned and headed out of the room.

She led him to another section of the Spectre Office; then turned to the right, reaching into an alcove. "I see your education is in production engineering; I think you'll appreciate this. Put these on the markings over there." She waved an open hand toward the center of the room, and proffered a pair of 2 centimeter-thick gray-green rectangles.

As Shepard took them and moved where indicated, he saw a pair of yellow rectangles marked out on the floor, surrounded by concentric arcs and calibration lights. As his ARO began to put callouts on the equipment surrounding him, he realized what he was seeing, and arranged the two slabs to fit, stepped on them, spread his arms and fingers, and looked straight ahead.

Agent T'Iar looked up from the console. "No need to brief you? Excellent." With an approving nod, she activated the system.

Two massive arms folded out of the ceiling, circling him as they descended.

**Scanning**, explained his ARO.

The meter-thick arms quick-printed 4mm hexagonal sections of the Inertial Layer; multiple sets of surgical manipulators positioned them at a rate around 37 per second. Drawing power from the arms wirelessly, the yellowish "cells" bonded to each other as they were assigned locations. To Shepard, it felt like he was being covered with tiny bugs, wriggling as they formed their sections of the layer, at which point it began to feel more like he was being dipped in a thick liquid.

Agent T'Iar explained as the armormaker had its way with him, "The Inertial Layer will power up after it integrates with your SCI."

"I assume these two blocks you gave me are the boot soles, already finished, and will be cut to fit after?"

"In fact, no. They are scaffolding. The materials will be assembled into place underneath and replace it. An active metamaterial called Hyderax – developed on Kahje – will use it as raw materials during self-assembly. The result will integrate with your feet to provide a level of protection approaching that of Impervium, motion enhancement that will allow you to operate longer and travel farther on foot, even under load, and with increased stealth. It will also require replacement after a few months of use, so you will need to return here regularly."

"I assume that's part of why the Council wants the Alliance to provide a ship."

"As reasons are measured, this one is quite trivial. The Hydreax will slowly revert to an inert form over time as the material 'dies,' retaining much of its ruggedness, but losing its active enhancements of increased strength and stealth. It will also weigh slightly less."

"Must be expensive."

T'Iar looked up at him. "Your species spent nearly all its development using Scarcity Economy, yes?"

Shepard paused, trying not to let his annoyance show. "The universe _is_ a place of scarcity. Most of it is a hard vacuum. Most of the matter is Dark. What little matter we can easily interact with is hardly ever accommodating to life, let alone our specific kind.

"Even in the comfortable embrace of our home planet's environs, only some areas are readily habitable; humans have argued for centuries whether the most universal human emotion is _fear_ or _laziness_; without a need to work, most people readily settle into an apathetic stupor. If everyone had everything they wanted, they'd have no place to keep it.

"Scarcity Economy is just the way the universe works."

Another curious glance; the asari's expression became just a hint softer. _Empathy? Compassion?_

"_Very_ scarce, and it shows readily," she answered her own question. "Notice that both times I have offered you something, you assume something is required in exchange."

"If scarcity weren't the rule, things would have no value."

"To a degree, that is true. But the relentless advance of civilization has rendered many of the universe's default rules obsolete. Thanks to medicine, a severe injury or disease is no longer a death sentence. We persist on planets utterly hostile to our bodies. Pain itself is nearly optional. If we can crack the code of matter, we will be able to transmute anything into almost anything else. We learned how to heal and feed ourselves with science, why should we not use it to create abundance?"

"Left to themselves, people don't know how to behave when they have plenty. Our competitive nature drives us to amass and waste more than we need or can use."

"Civilization takes time to adjust to new technologies. The benefits of travel expand the mind. With more able to travel, we discover the world beyond ourselves. If we only focus on ourselves because we must struggle to survive, growth is much rarer, more difficult…slower. People die for mere _lack_. Abundance is the solution."

Reaching his neck, the armormaker finished its work on the Inertial layer, and lowered its array to start at his feet again. The molecular assemblers in the arms began to make more noise as they changed modes.

T'Iar continued, "And yet you are right: _things_ have only the value we give them. Intelligence…who we are…has _intrinsic_ value. It is what separates a 'what' from a 'who.' In fact, from what you said earlier, I think you'll agree it is _all_ that has value."

The armormaker began in earnest, its arms almost a blur as it began criscrossing a whitish, sinewy substance along the length of his extremities.

He squinted at her. "I'm getting this from the Spectre who just advised staying focused on the mission, and less about the individual?"

"It is a difficult line we walk, Agent. It requires _balance_. Exactly when it is better to end someone…or to show mercy…can be difficult to decide, especially in the moment. But only someone who knows both sides of this can hope to judge well. Your culture – and you particularly – value the individual, particularly when compared to the other two Council races. This is important, and I think it is one of the reasons Councillor Tevos was very much in favor of your selection. At present, the Council's Agents are generally respected and feared; we think they should be respected and _trusted_."

In the silence that followed, Shepard noticed the intricate dance being performed by the armormaker as it began to assemble the next layer. Its noises changed again.

Shepard froze in thought; he didn't dare gesture for 6x acceleration during the armoring, but wished he had more time to think. This was a significant revelation. "And yet it seems you would have to be disappointed in our species' social growth to date."

"That is true in some ways, not in others." Agent T'Iar turned her head and looked at another display. "But before we get to that, you may feel the Inertial layer begin to move your extremities as the power layer is assembled and attached. In addition to range-of-motion, it is also calibrating how much force is required to prompt you to move.

"As the armor contains its own DCE intelligence, it will use its sensors and your own omnitool to stay aware of things you might miss on your own. For example, it can potentially help you step aside from a bullet, move or even jump to safety if your current location becomes unstable, or call attention to potentially important information on your HUD. Oh, I'm sorry; it looks like you have a full Augmented Reality implant with visual overlay. That is actually better, because the bandwidth is higher."

The Inertial layer had already begun its process; Shepard found it was something like dancing as the following partner. "Right, then. So the asari have social plans for humanity?"

T'Iar looked up impishly. "Conspiracy theory, Agent Shepard?"

"Call it 'healthy paranoia,' Agent T'Iar."

"Well…that would be _telling_." With a subtle head tilt, the asari looked back down at the console. "Truly, the Republics have no more plans for humanity than the Alliance has plans for asari. Individuals may have opinions or even agendas, but the execution of those plans depends on a great many variables."

The asari continued, "Still, perhaps you have read some of the psychology studies that show more humans are inclined to generosity when they are not operating under the burden of perceived scarcity. There is a measurable – and non-trivial – cognitive load imposed by the sense that survival is a struggle. Many of the major social and early scientific advances in your own history were made by people who were already "wealthy," or at least born into "privilege" – _gentleman scientists_ seems to be the phrase – like Thomas Edison or James Clerk Maxwell."

Shepard countered, "And yet the majority of people today who don't have to work to survive spend their days in PVR, or causing mischief. Most of them have never had to be mature enough to care for themselves. As machine intelligences take over the necessary operations of keeping people fed and sheltered, the people find increasingly destructive – or self-destructive – ways to pass the time. I assume the same thing is true on Thessia, or the Eclipse group would never have gotten started."

"Then you probably assume incorrectly. Have you ever met Jona Sederis?"

Shepard waited for his ARO to provide him with some relevant information; instead, the display blinked, and then showed only basic information about location, time, direction, and so on. It looked like a soft reset of his ARO appliance. "Uh…my ARO just rebooted."

"Then let me assure you that the leader and founder of the Eclipse mercenaries is a psychopath. For myself, I would consider it community service to hunt her down. But that would simply create a power vacuum in an organization that, while dangerous and malicious, is at least well-understood by the Spectres, and even used from time to time.

"In fact, most asari are highly cooperative. Outliers are often left to discover the errors of their ways."

The asari lapsed into silence as the armormaker continued to operate. Considering their size, the arms moved quickly, and very precisely. Shepard knew the best way to stay safe was to stay still.

He noticed that the synthetic muscles being applied were coordinating their motions as they calibrated. He was glad to have been warned. "Alright, then; new topic: How did the Spectres get started? And I don't mean the official version. I mean, what can I as a Spectre now know about the origins of the organization?"

Her laugh was surprisingly musical. "To begin with, 'Spectre' isn't the way the word in Thesserit actually renders into your language. Remember, it stands for Special Tactics And Reconaissance. The most obvious acronym in your own tongue is STAR, and this word also has multiple meanings in your language as well, much more like what was intended: A powerful light aginst the ever-present galactic darkness, a source of life and hope."

The asari's VI did some research and added a briefing to her ARA; Era read it directly, "However, someone in your Alliance probably thought that sounded wrong, like one of your industrial age heroes. Apparently law enforcement uses the star already, so the Alliance liaison tried to add a little mystique, or intrigue.

"As for how we got started, it was long ago, shortly after the formation of the Council. The Council didn't want to grant cross-jurisdictional authority to multiple agencies, but they did agree to create a new agency with only the most capable agents. The first was a salarian, Beelo Geerjay. He was considered a 'loose cannon' by some, but he was effective. The turian and asari councilors added their own choices to the first wave, and the Spectres, as you would say, were born."

**# # #**

_Maybe I should watch an episode of __Updater__ just to find out what the fuss is all about._

With water running down his body in tiny rivulets, the warm spray hammering the back of his head, the distinctively fragrant lather of nanotech detergent, Shepard relaxed for a few seconds before the thought of tomorrrow's landing pulled him squarely into the present again.

After toweling dry, he curled up in bed, selected the compressed rest from his omnitool, and was instantly asleep.

*** Glossary ***

ARA: Augmented Reality Appliance

ARO: Augmented Reality Overlay

Bosri: A hummus-like paste made of a protein-rich algae originally native to Rannoch.

CFS: Chief Flight Surgeon

CO: Commanding Officer

DCE: Distributed Computing Environment

Esig: electromagnetic signature

Fendus: A turian wafer made from a plant of the same name. Normally offered only as a garnish, this crispy, spade-shaped scoop is often used to collect blood from the prey food.

Figmo: sometimes referred to as "short timer's disease," _figmo_ is a misplaced attitude that one can, "Forget It, [I've] Got My Orders," and blow off other tasks until shipping out on a new assignment.

FTL: Faster Than Light

SNAFU: Situation Normal: All Fouled Up

SOCM: Special Operations Combat Medicine training. (Pronounced "sock 'em.") Soldiers earn more professional credit by increasing their value in the field. Almost always taken remotely.

SOP: Standard Operating Procedure

SPC: Sleep Pod Corridor

TPM: Trusted Platform Module


	30. Chapter 30: Therum, Inbound

A/N: Sorry for another delay.

The translation function of Garrus' monocle is based on a smartphone app called WordLens that seems to have been assimilated into Google's Translator app.

*** Therum: Inbound ***

A countdown appeared on Tali's HUD, and one of her VIs awakened her as the pod tilted down, hissing open as it did. She looked quickly up and down the SPC before stepping quietly out and heading aft through the mess. Although the ship was relatively dark, computer-enhanced vision was displayed on the HUD, letting her see her environment as if it were daytime lighting. The lift opened its doors when she waved through the holograph, and took her to the hangar deck.

As the door opened, she was surprised to see the turian standing at the weapons bench. She checked her chronometer display; ship time was 05:42.

The turian's dimodulated voice carried easily across the hangar as Tali approached, "Oh. You're up early."

"And, uh…you're up earlier," Tali replied. "I thought I was going to be up before anyone else."

"Yes, and good work," he said. "I must confess I'm hardly surprised to see you – you seemed like the type to be proactive – but I thought I'd be done before you arrived. I need a few more minutes for this thing to finish burn-in, but you can start breaking down if you want." He stood, scooted the stool to the right, sat again.

"Thanks," Tali placed her shotgun and pistol on the bench and remained standing as she unlocked them with her omnitool. "What do you think about this mission?"

"Me?" Garrus stopped his work and looked up with some surprise. "If the past is any indication, we'll get there ten minutes after this asari has been found by the geth. Or shot. Or just after it's too late for us to help. But maybe Saren is here himself to get this Prothean expert, and I'll find him in my sight." He looked back down at his assault rifle, made an adjustment to it. "But I doubt I'll be that lucky."

Tali activated a suite of weapons service apps and started them analysing her two favourites. "Well, aren't _you_ an optimist," she teased.

The turian was too focused on his work to notice. "Yeah, well…attitude is half the battle. If I didn't think the future could be better, I'd…probably one-way into PVR."

Tali looked up with surprise. "You PVR games?"

Garrus shook his head without looking up from the bench. "_Game_," he corrected. "And only when I'm in the 'wait' stage of 'hurry up and wait.'"

"One game? What is it? Uh…if you don't mind me asking." She glanced at the analysis as it began to scroll out test results.

"Oh, I don't mind. It's so old, you probably haven't heard of it. It's called Satrap."

"Satrap? You can't be serious."

"Hey, I've been playing it for so long that I've got it autofarming. It throws off credits a little better if I actually manage it, so I get in and talk with some of the NPCs, pick up new quests, cycle the harem…you know."

"I also know you could do better. Have you tried Hayali? It pays better, and I have a mossk generator patch for it, and it builds its own barns with the eggs."

The turian shook his head. "Nah, I only play Satrap. Too much other stuff to do, and it reminds me of my mother; I actually inherited her game castes. I don't think I'd ever give it up, but I don't want any more, either." Normally, this fairly simple lie was enough information for people to react as Tali did: change the subject after lapsing into silence.

But before she could get to the other subject, Garrus rose with a compacted weapon in each claw. "All right then, the bench is all yours; here's the seat if you want it. I'm going to go check if my other request finished. See you at breakfast?"

"Sure thing." Tali looked at the seat, and then back up at Garrus. "Um…thanks."

**# # #**

After acknowledging that asari are often very social, the geth had posted a sentry "to keep her company." Liara had attempted to maintain the ruse that she could not hear outside the bubble until the geth had started asking yes-or-no questions by displaying text where she could read it.

"Please go away," she said.

To her surprise, it did.

_I suppose they can afford to be patient_, she thought. _Where can I go?_

Her omnitool was still not responding to finger-gestured or spoken commands. The gauntlet did not even illuminate.

_This sinking feeling is probably part anxiety, part hunger_, she realized. _But if my omnitool isn't working at all, the emergency supplies may not be working, either._

Eventually, she drifted into a twitching and fitful sleep.

**# # #**

Shepard finished his third set of exercises, took a navy shower, put the cases containing his new armor on the stateroom table and opened them. He lit his omnitool gauntlet and started following the instructions and best practices for donning the armor. Even after his experience at the Spectre Office, he knew it would take some time to get used to the very different equipment, even if it wasn't more complex.

The inner layers felt much more organic than those of the Alliance Onyx; he'd been wearing variants of _that_ since they came out in '78, upgrading it with the monthly Alliance releases. He was reluctant to just leave the reliable system for an untested one on an actual ground mission.

_Still_, he realized, _human armor fits asari, or so I'm told. I suppose it works both ways. If so, this may have centuries of refinements and upgrades, and by one of the oldest races in the galaxy._

The Inertial layer, when not being worn, collapsed into what amounted to a puddle of yellow; as he pinched a part of it between two fingers and lifted it, directional striping and other markings indicated where the arms and legs were. Shepard slipped it on with unexpected ease; he had thought it would be sticky and awkward. Though it had a fine honeycomb texture across its surface, it was loose and slippery until fully worn. His omnitool chirped its acknowledgement of interface; the Layer seemed to come subtly to life, as if gripping him in the way that a fencer holds a foil: Gently, but thoroughly.

**Inertial Layer integration**, said his ARO. It displayed a motion graphic for him to emulate; he squatted to the floor, wrapped his arms around his knees, then stood, stretching his arms toward the overhead. The ARO continued to direct him as the layer adjusted its fit.

The MCP layer was next; slightly thinner than he was used to, but also heavier. It had been understood for over a hundred years that it was far more efficient to apply mechanical counterpressure where needed rather than pressurize an entire suit, and powered nanotech made it easier to move. Though the technology was over a century old, the Prothean ruins on Mars had revealed advances that made the combat biosuit a practical reality. The Alliance armor used the MCP layer to move the external platemail as needed, but it normally took training to make the most of it; best practices were often counter-intuitive.

The external sections looked like entirely conventional matte black reactive plates, but were not. They changed position and shape in response to his motions, collapsing and shifting to prevent noise and resistance even before Shepard himself was consciously aware of his own intent to move; apparently it was taking advantage of his neural implant's cognitive overclock function.

His ARO informed him that he could turn off the active mode if he wished, but advised him to leave it enabled. _It does feel a little strange,_ he thought, _but better to have it and use it._

Finally dressed, he activated the room's mirror holo and inspected himself. From his gauntlet, he selected Maintenance Mode, and the suit's DCE hypervisor covered his ARO with realtime status data. He turned the image left and right, noticing the release points and potential weaknesses, and also noticed that it was more comfortable than his Onyx medium armor. Yellow highlights indicated settings that could be reset or adjusted; clearly this was meant to be worn often, used actively, and personalized.

The outer layer was capable of active camouflage, but could do so for longer than the Onyx. Using his omnitool, he switched it from black to white to see how fast it changed, and was impressed that it seemed to be almost instantaneous.

"Victor Indigo, do I need to calibrate this armor before using it?"

**Use data was copied from previous Combat Suit and current PCS is actively monitoring biometrics.**

His chronometer informed him he had about eleven minutes before starting to use time reserved for breakfast. He did a fourth set of exercises to get a feel for the new armor and was both surprised and pleased how it enhanced performance.

**# # #**

"Eggs? Eggs from a what?" Wrex had his head turned so he could look straight down at the yellow pile of food on the plate before him.

"From a chicken," Ash said, holding up her hands to show the size. "It's a kind of bird, about this big. They've got lots of protein. Eat up, they're good for you."

Wrex looked up and across the table at her. "A chicken? I don't like the implication here. Don't you humans say that '_you are what you eat_'?"

"Different context," Kaidan waved a hand as if to erase the topic. "This is a _food_ chicken, not a _coward_ chicken. Whole different animal."

Wrex looked at the plate again, shrugged, and lifted it off the table. Pouring the contents into his mouth, he chewed carefully, as if evaluating the flavor for emotional significance.

Having been informed by one of her VIs, Tali messaged Kaidan, **It looks to me like that's the same thing.**

The reply came back quickly, **Alliance Lieutenant Kaidan Alenko: We can't let him go hungry.**

**Then tell him they're eggs from a Tyrannosaurus.**

Kaidan turned and looked at the quarian as he subvocalized his reply. **Alliance Lieutenant Kaidan Alenko: Pretty clever. I think they are the closest living relative. But maybe he won't ask. And I'd better not mention that the full name is Tyrannosaurus Rex.**

Tali glanced at the image of a T. Rex that appeared on her HUD. **Sure you should. He'll love it.**

"What's this? The whole ground team eating together?" As he stepped around the corner, Shepard waved at the food printer, but addressed two tables of the main mess. The printer had prepared the meal, and was selectively heating it for him. "I couldn't have asked for better."

"It will be if you get over here and start eating, sir," Ash indicated the empty seat opposite herself. "We waited for you with our usual self-restraint."

"Like one pig waits for another," Kaidan delivered another forkful of waffles to his mouth.

Shepard accepted the tray of warmed breakfast and walked past the rest of the team to the seat Ash had offered. As he approached, he noticed a handwritten placard on the table in front of the seat, **Spectre Parking Only**.

"Nice armor," Garrus said. "Spectre Office?"

"Yes, and thanks," Shepard pushed the placard with his tray and stepped over the bench before sitting down. "I hope it's as much of an improvement as it seems."

"Bah," Wrex put down the empty plate. "Nothing chicken about that. Not very filling, though. Not a lot of texture, either." He turned an eye toward Kaidan. "What are _you_ eating?"

The human biotic gestured with the knife in his right hand. "Bio-juice, ham omelette, back bacon, and blueberry waffles."

"Looks pretty colorful. You sure none of it's toxic?"

Kaidan shrugged. "It's real Earth food. And if you think _this_ is colorful, you should see some of the cereals I ate as a kid."

"Um, actually, no." Tali tapped her faceplate. "He sees more in the infrared than you do, so to him, all the greens and blues and purples melt into black, like everything in the ultraviolet does for you." She continued to insert food pebbles into her helmet's chowlock as she spoke to Kaidan. "It's a smaller slice of spectrum, but it lets him distinguish more frequencies within it. Gives him _incredible_ night vision."

"Well aren't _you_ the little search engine." Though Wrex leaned away from Tali as he said it, he seemed amused.

"You don't mind, do you?"

Wrex chuckled, an air-rumbling noise that could have been mistaken for a cheerful earthquake. "Not a bit." He looked toward Kaidan, pointed at the omelette. "But is _that_ also made from eggs?"

"The omelette? Sure is. Just prepared differently."

"Do you always eat eggs?"

"Even without the nutrient tweaking, they've got a lot of protein," he shrugged. "I depended on them in high school, so I learned lots of ways to get 'em."

"Don't let him fool you," Shepard interrupted, "Kaidan will eat anything that isn't moving too fast."

Kaidan had carved a wedge of omelette and stacked it on the waffles. "Survival of the fittest. If it's too weak or slow to get away, it's my job to cull the herd."

"That's the spirit!" Wrex guffawed, nodded approval. "The strong survive, even if they're only…" he pointed once at Kaidan's plate, "…uh…those things."

**# # #**

Garrus' omnitool added an update to his HUD monocle about the Therum ground team final briefing.

He sighed, tapped an acknowledgement on the icon as it hung in virtual space in front of him. _Best timing in the universe_, he thought. He reached for the fibrous cloth in a small alcove, constricted the proper muscles and wiped himself clean. Tossing the used cloth into the nearby receptacle, he wiped a talon through the glowing hexagon marked EVACUATE (his monocle superimposed turian characters over the human language.)

It took only a few seconds for him to reattach both sides of his waistsling, clip compression trousers to it, and get a brief notification of its operational status from his omnitool. He checked himself in the mirror, flexing his fringe. He still thought it was amusing that humans put mirrors in the same room as a toilet. As a C-Sec officer, he knew about the practice, but had never had to live with one. _I guess that's just part of the price you pay for not having chitinous plates._ He shook his head. _Things get out of place, more stuff sticks to your outer…uh…whatever they call it._

He turned his head, interested to see himself in reverse, ran talons along the interplate joints to make sure they were clean, and then noticed he could inspect himself more quickly without having to spend the time to preen each joint. _Of course, people who have lost a claw – or even just a talon – have said as much, but it's not quite as thorough a check, even if can be a little faster._

He skittered claws down his front, checking to be sure the various aspects of his attire were all in good form, his sidearm in place. "Once again: Best looking turian on the ship." He nodded approvingly toward the mirror.

Striding along _Normandy_'s corridors, he noted how many design and engineering choices it shared with the turian ships he'd served aboard. _Same problems, same solutions_,_ I suppose_.

The human guard nodded once as the CommCon door hissed aside. Garrus returned the nod, and stepped into the room. Seeing an empty seat, he moved to it.

Shepard noted the turian's entrance, then glanced quickly over his shoulder to be sure the hologram was still active. "Thanks for getting here early, everyone. No need to wait for the top of the hour, I suppose." He waved a hand forward. "First, the bad news. LRSA took longer to obtain and compile, so we're running a couple of hours late. The good news is they figured out what was causing the problem and the new LRSA runs 20 percent faster than the old."

He rose from his seat, looking back at the view of the planet showing on the holo. "Mission parameters haven't changed, but we have better intel. We've confirmed that none of their big geth dreadnoughts are here, so that's good. If it was, I'd probably have called for backup, at least from one of the Scout fleets or Intelligence."

He flicked a gesture at the room VI; the holo changed to a picture of one of the other humans. "For any of you who haven't seen him, this is Corporal Richard Jenkins; I've assigned him to ground crew the Mako shakedown, but we'll probably be losing him in a few days. They've asked for him back on Eden Prime." He indicated the non-humans with a wave of one hand. "And because I have the three of you, I knew it wouldn't adversely affect the ground team to lose him. So I told 'em that'd be okay. Haven't got full orders back yet, but we'll probably be asked to deliver him after we pick up this archaeologist, Doctor…uh…"

He stepped to the side of the holo, pointing into it as it switched to a view of the planet Therum and zoomed in on it. "Doctor Liara T'Soni. Based on info from the University, the part of the dig that's being explored is _here_, but the terrain is rocky and pointy where it isn't covered with liquid sulfur. So we'll be landing at the nearest known Approved Landing Zone, which is _here_." He pointed somewhere else on the map. "It's about twenty kliks away. But with an M35, we should make good time, and _Normandy_ can scan for more site intel as we're en route.

"Once we get there, we start looking. The university has provided an Omnitool Locator Key, so within nine or ten kliks, we should be able to get to her quickly. If we're lucky, we won't find a corpse.

"We are seeing some unknown esigs and silhouettes, but without using active sensors, it's hard to tell. I'm assuming they're geth. The fact that they're here is both good and bad; it suggests that they don't have her yet, but it means we'll probably have to engage them."

The holograph had been keeping up with his briefing; when he gestured for the next image, the new six-wheeled APC appeared in orthogonal and isometric views with looping, synchronized animations of egress, launch, landing, turret use, and safety features. "You've probably all seen the Mako APC in the hangar; we'll be using that for an LV. Alenko, you're rated in the M35, aren't you?" (Shepard knew that he was.)

The biotic nodded. "Yes, sir, all positions."

"I also understand you have the required 30 hours of pilot time, so unless you have an objection, you're driving. I'll copilot and EIO from the right chair. Williams, you're on turret. Vakarian…uh, Wrex, and…mm…" he lingered over the quarian, "I'm sorry, I'm not sure which of your names I should use to address you; my VI is still giving me your full name."

"Just call me Tali," she answered, "But if you're introducing me to someone, you should use my full name: Tali'Zorah nar Rayya."

"Right, then. The three of you are payload. You're also on drop detail, which means that in addition to prepping your own gear, you'll be helping get the Mako combat ready. That's at least partly so you can get a little familiarity with the Mako in case you need to operate it.

"Tali, I'm tasking you with engineering, propulsion, shields, and systems integration; you'll work with Loadmaster Kobunde. You can find him in the hangar. Wrex, you'll inspect and load weaps, armor, and stores with Williams. Officer Vakarian…I mean Garrus…you'll work with Jenkins and Gomez on avionics, DCE, and non-ordnance consumables. We're about four hours out, and none of this should take more than two hours. I recommend any discretionary time be spent going through the mission details so you're well informed."

Shepard glanced over his shoulder at the holograph, and stepped the presentation forward with a gesture. "Of course, no battle plan has ever survived contact with the enemy, so although it would be great if we can just drop in, find T'Soni and get out, I want to cover some contingencies.

"If we need to split up, the ground team will have two fireteams: Alpha will be me leading Williams and Wrex. Bravo will be Alenko leading Vakarian and…Tali. That puts a sniper and a biotic on both teams. Tali, your geth report was excellent. I suggest everyone read it for details, but the thing to keep in mind is what we covered in the other briefing: Tali will _probably_ be able to crack geth processes. Before you take one down, watch what it's doing, try to make sure you aren't shooting at an ally."

"Oh!" The quarian leaned forward in her seat, almost jumping out of it. "I wrote a snap-on for your combat displays that monitors my hypervisor. It uses the Alliance LOSI. If I've successfully commandeered a geth platform, this snap-on will add a red highlight and an _eks_ to it so you know not to shoot it as long as it's on our side. It's the same protocol as an IFF wave-off."

Williams snorted. "Are you serious? You just…_wrote it_? Or is it some open-source thing that you've modified?"

Tali seemed taken aback. She pulled her hands back to her shoulders, and then began to slowly recount the details. "I got the LOSI SDK from Roz, and when I finished, the GCI VI VRSed it and got approval from…uh…" The enviro-suited quarian looked down at her omnitool, then up at Kaidan. "You, right? Lieutenant Alenko?"

Kaidan looked to Shepard. "I thought she was just asking a coding question. I'm now the GCTO?" (He said it as "gecktoe.") He quirked an eyebrow. "Extra responsibility, no extra pay?"

Shepard smiled approvingly. "I've always liked how fast you catch on."

The biotic turned to Ash, and nodded. "Actually yes, she did. Must be all of _nine_ lines long, and it uses existing Alliance libraries. It's a cute little piece of code. I'd even call it _elegant_."

Ash glanced at the quarian and back at Kaidan. "Well, you're the Gecktoe."

Shepard asked, "Is your snap-on in the Therum Landing NfoX?"

Tali nodded. "It _should_ be. You'll have to approve the installation, but your combat security VI should vet it against the NTPM."

"Good. Make sure you all install that so we can get the most out of it." Shepard turned to the Executive Officer. "Pressly, is the stealth system capable of keeping the ship cloaked for the duration of the mission?"

The balding man looked up from his omnitool with a half-grin. "Sure, even with a synched orbit, assuming we don't get involved in a firefight. We will be coming out of the relay with the sinks engaged, but LRSA should give us enemy locations and vectors. Best practice for this is for us to modify our course to enter active sensor range out of sight of as many of the enemy as possible. Stealth will make that reliable and seamless."

Shepard leaned on one of the chair arms. "I assume that's what we did at Eden Prime."

"Yessir."

Shepard addressed the ground team again, "And just so you all know, _Normandy_ will be holding a standard synched orbit. It'll give them excellent oversight from the LZ to OTH, and they can be down to pick us up in a maximum of fifteen minutes if we get into serious trouble."

"That won't happen," Wrex said.

Everyone looked at him.

"You have _me_."

A few glances were exchanged.

Tali tilted her head. "Uh…right. So you're our Good Luck Krogan?"

Garrus interrupted, "Traditionally, people who think that sort of stuff usually say you only need a krogan _tooth_ to bring good luck," the turian waved a claw at the massive krogan. "And here you've got a whole mouthful. Maybe we'll get _extra_ lucky." He leaned back in his chair. "But I doubt it."

**# # #**

Since the Council had revoked his Spectre status, Saren could not allow himself to be seen. There were simply too many cameras in too many places. For one thing, his cranial flowspikes were too distinctive, practically unique.

But Benezia was able to move freely, using the _foshak_ headdress (normally worn during mourning) that concealed a facecloaker, for use when needed. Noveria was one of the places where she didn't, and instead dressed in a business suit. It was very flattering, allowed her to control conversations more easily, especially when she "turned on the charm," as the human expression went. ("Turning on" a behavior made it a strangely machine-like phrase, one that made Saren wonder if the humans wouldn't have done well under reaper rule.)

They were still on Noveria, the turian practically quarantined aboard _Invicta_. It was starting to wear on Saren's patience. "We still have nothing more on the beacon message integration. Where is your daughter? She should have been delivered days ago."

Standing at the back of the cabin with a camera and holograph functioning as a mirror, Benezia adjusted the human-made business suit. "The geth tell me she is trapped in a Prothean chamber, surrounded by a barrier curtain. She cannot escape, but they have been unable to get past it, either by brute force, or by hacking."

"Not so capable as you thought?"

Tugging at the suit, Benezia refused to be baited. "Grodis would have done no better. _Has_ done no better. But the geth have other resources. They have not been stopped, merely delayed. There is another entrance, and they will use that."

"Why didn't they use it already?"

"Their report was copied to you." She had applied makeup, making herself look as sultry as possible, and was studying the results. "It will surely take me longer to be seen by the right people at Peak 15 than it will take you to read it."

The turian scratched distractedly at the console to his right. "Do you need to go?"

"The rachni queen is still being difficult, and the BH Board needs to know that progress is being made on the façade research. I also need to prepare for Liara's arrival; we do not know how long she will be useful." The asari turned and looked at Saren, read his expression and body language. _He needs me_, she thought. _He doesn't want me to go_. She stopped at the door, put one hand on the threshold and looked back at him again. "Though I suppose I can do that from here."

They regarded each other for a long moment.

_We must find a way to do better,_ Benezia thought.

Saren's gaze wandered across the floor.

"Still better than extinction," the turian said quietly.

Benezia looked away to the "integration," stretching like a tree root along the length of the cabin, a constant reminder of Sovereign. "Even if we must become the enemy?"

"It was _you_ who said understanding was the Way," Saren's cybernetic eyes dimmed as he waved a claw at the research data hanging in holograph above his console. "But the more we understand, the worse it gets. The reapers…_eat_ civilizations."

Benezia frowned, shook her head in thought. "Until we know why, we need more knowledge."

"And as long as we remain useful to it, the more knowledge we gain. There is no other course of action open to us." He also looked up at the "integration," and then rose from his seat, walked to the ship's hatch.

He stepped close to Benezia, but still out of sight from outside the hatch. He made eye contact with her, nodded subtly.

_I don't dare say more aloud_, he thought. _And we both know it._

**# # #**

Shepard approached the APC from astern; already in its Ready-15 configuration, the M35 was face forward. The other members of the ground team were already there, Tali securing a service panel on the top of the Mako and hopping down with Garrus' help.

Noticing the word _Pengaroo_ hand-painted on the side, just above the Mako's unusually high "waterline," Shepard pointed at the "nose art" of a long-legged penguin, drawn so it looked like it was jumping, with its wings flapping, but comically not flying. "'Penguin kangaroo'? Who did this?"

A head popped up from the service trench centered under the Mako. Richard Jenkins was all smiles. "That would be me, sir."

Shepard tapped the Mako's armored side. "Traditionally, the _pilot_ gets to name the craft." He waved at it, "But that's kind of cute. Maybe it'll stick." He turned to the ground team. "Okay; Tali, Wrex, Vakarian, in the back." He followed them in, pointed to the seats, "Each seat has a…oh…this is gonna be awkward." Seeing that Garrus was already seated, Shepard noted that the remaining seats and restraint systems were for humans. He pointed at one of them. "Tali, you can sit starboard comfortably, right?"

She was seated almost instantly. "Sure…and I think this will close over me." She reached up, pulled down on the padded shoulder bar, which clicked into place and adjusted itself down to accommodate her small frame. A green light appeared atop her headrest.

Shepard paused thoughtfully. "I don't suppose you ever hit the dirt in an APC?"

"No, but I took the turian fleet PVR Training." Her VI converted units for her and displayed the relevant numbers on her helmet's HUD, "I'm rated to fourteen gees."

"Outstanding," he said, visibly impressed, "Glad to hear it." He glanced at Garrus, then back at Tali. "Where did you get access to that?"

The quarian seemed briefly surprised and embarrassed. "I don't know…who got it originally. I'd guess it was someone's Gift of Passage. We…share resources on the flotilla."

"Gift of Passage?" Wrex secured his assault rifle into the overhead rack, "You have to _pay_ to get aboard your own ships? That's not a gift, that's a bribe."

"No, no," Tali waved a hand reassuringly, "It's about passage _into adulthood_. Someone probably got that as payment for doing work aboard the turian fleet, and brought it back from their pilgrimage. And it's actually a few years old. It's part of the training we can get in preparing for our pilgrimages. But like I said, it's PVR, and I kind of liked it, so I did it…um…maybe...twelve times?"

That seemed a little excessive, and from the way she said it, Shepard thought there might be more to this story. He continued to look at her expectantly. "_Twelve_ times?"

"There was a soldier who was facilitating it who I was…um…infatuated with. Kal'Reegar vas...um..." Even without his VI actively enhancing his vision, Shepard could see she was looking somewhere else. "Anyway, I wanted to be able to talk with him, so I wanted to have some idea of what it was like to be a soldier. It was kind of fun."

"What kind of landing craft was it?" Garrus asked.

"Um…a Tarjin? Torgan? I can't remember the name, but it was an LV-38." Her VI started to call up information about it; she dismissed it.

Shepard grinned. "The LV-38 _Tarzan _is a turian vehicle, all right, but that's the Alliance designation used during the First Contact War."

"That's the _Relay 314 Incident_, if you please." Garrus punctuated the sentence with a grinding noise that Shepard's ARO indicated was made by rasping the back teeth and indicated disapproval or sarcasm. "The vehicle is actually called a Jamilir, and yes, they're pretty old. But if you've trained to take fourteen gees in a crashbox like that, you should be ready for _anything_." He tilted his head down slightly and made a fist with his left claw, signaling his approval.

"Well…except falling out of the sky when your lander gets shot out from under you," Wrex said casually.

Garrus regarded the krogan. "Hm, interesting. How high were you?"

"Three hundred meters." _Top that_, he seemed to be saying.

Shepard realized Ash and Kaidan were listening…and waiting. "You'll have to tell me about that sometime," he said. "But for now, I'm not sure how to seat you. _Securely_." Shepard studied the krogan thoughtfully.

The krogan turned sideways, studying Shepard with his left eye, and the seats with his right. "I'll bet you think this is funny," he said good-naturedly, "And it probably would be if I weren't used to it." He turned slightly, straddled the two middle seats, reached both hands up and grabbed the shoulder bars, pulling one down on each of his massive shoulders.

Shepard lit his omnitool, connected to the Mako's network, adjusted the cabin settings. "This isn't designed for krogan passengers…" he started.

"Oh…you think?" Wrex agreed.

"…but I think I can make your clever little kludge an approved landing configuration."

Kaidan leaned around his seat to look back at the krogan, "You're gonna need to sign a waiver."

Shepard knew this was technically correct under Alliance regs, and Kaidan had seemed completely nonchalant when he said it, but a tiny voice in his head said, _You can't be seriously saying this._

"For what…so I can't go whining to a human lawyer if I get hurt?" Wrex growled. "I've been making planetary combat drops since before your species knew how to _fly_, junior. You put a waiver in front of me, I'll _feed_ it to you."

The mischevious grin that had been slowly forming on Kaidan's face only got bigger as Ash climbed past him into the Fire Control Seat.

"Krogan _are _pretty tough," Ash noted. "If you've got the Loadmaster VI to accept it, I don't think it'll be a problem."

Shepard nodded approvingly, turned to Garrus. The turian was in the portside seat, which had somehow acquired a modified shoulder bar. His weapons were secured within reach, and he looked smugly confident. Shepard gestured towards the shoulder bar. "You install that?"

The turian glanced down. "There's a restraint crossbar for turians that was already in the Mako's onboard fabber library. I asked…uh…your Requisition Officer, I think you call them MFOs, if he could make it for me, and here it is, rated to eighteen gees." A talon clicked on the gray metal.

Shepard nodded, thumping a fist on the restraint. "Nice work." He paused, glancing around the cramped cabin. "All right; lookin' good there, team. Let's get on the ground." He turned and started to clamber forward. "Pilot, payload is secure," he said for the flight recorder. He put two fingers to his ear, signaling the comm, "All stations, secure for launch." He mashed the DOOR SECURE button and the hatch they had just come through hissed closed, clanked bolts into place. Shepard stepped over the center console and into the right seat, started strapping himself in as the cabin thoomped its pressure test.

"Mako, Air Boss. We'll be over the drop zone in…uh…about five minutes," came the slightly distorted reply over the comm, "Begin final checks. I am disconnecting you from the mains."

"Linacs are secure, stores are full," said Ash, double-checking the list on her ARO against the displays and settings at her board, "ECM is SOTA and enabled, Shield function 100%, ultracaps fully charged. FCO declares _Go For Drop_." Internal lights flickered as Kaidan began to run the sequential check on the motors and backups in each wheel hub.

Shepard was secure in the right seat, reading from the checklist on his ARO. "Cabin pressurized, recycler at 12%, comm is all greens," he read from his board, "IFF and transponder are active and muted for operation. CorpNav protocol in effect. EIO declares _Go For Drop_."

"Switchover to internals is good," Kaiden answered, "Power at 230MWh, Nav is up, Booster is charged and fully fuelled. Mako declares GO for drop."

The Loadmaster, now functioning as Air Boss, waved at them through the Mako's Virtual Windshield as he moved out of the way. "Outstanding. You are cleared for drop, Mako." As he spoke over the comm, he reached out and patted the Mako's leading edge firmly enough that it could be felt by those aboard. It was an old tradition. "Transferring you to bridge control."

"Acknowledged." Kaidan clicked the PA, alerting the landing team of his intent to speak internally. "By the way, if you guys get scared on the way down…just do what I do and close your eyes."

There was a stunned silence.

"All due respect, sir," Ash reached her left foot out of the gunnery cage and kicked the pilot's chair awkwardly.

"Yeah, really," Shepard agreed quietly, "Give him one for me."

Ash's foot came out and whacked the pilot's chair again.

"As long as you're handing 'em out…" Wrex started.

"Yeah!" Tali said playfully.

Two more thumps.

"Okay, okay, I can take a hint," Kaidan laughed; he held his hands up in surrender.

The Mako's electronic and mechanical sounds filled the brief silence.

"_I_ like you, Lieutenant," said Garrus.

"Well, you _are_ a turian," Wrex shrugged, as if that explained the problem.

"Mako, flight," said Joker's voice over the comm, "Are you live?"

"Flight, Mako. We are GO for drop," answered Kaidan.

"I have launch control," Joker answered, "Uh, Commander, the Approved Landing Zone is about twenty kliks from where you said you wanted to start looking, but I've got 500 meters of nice, straight service road that's a lot closer. It's not officially approved. I can drop you there and save you about an hour in traffic, but it means I'll drop you a little early. You're green on my board, though."

Shepard's ARO showed him what Joker was seeing. He nodded once. "Sierra Hotel, Joker. Anyone going to make an angry face at us doing so?"

"Pfff…doubt it…this place is mostly _automated strip mining_." He sounded somehow annoyed at this.

"Take us in, Joker."

"Beginning final approach." The hangar door thumped and started to open. Their first sight of the planet could have been a picture postcard: _Normandy_ was descending toward a scenic view of sunlit, fluffy clouds and distant mountain peaks.

As the ramp reached its Launch Mode, it stopped, flat with the deck. Something clanked heavily, seemingly from everywhere. "Wheel locks are retracted," Kaidan noted for the "civilians" who might be disconcerted by the sound, "That means the catapult is the only thing holding us in." They descended into the clouds and everything outside was suddenly gray and rainy. It made the yellowish lights on the overhead seem bright.

"Catapult?" Wrex sounded confused, "Aren't we going fast enough?" As if answering, _Normandy_ shook through the boundary turbulence. The noise was heavy and mechanical inside the Mako as the chassis squeaked.

Kaidan spoke over his shoulder, still watching the instruments, "We have to make sure we drop far enough ahead of–"

"Mako, Flight. Launching in ten seconds," Joker's filtered voice interrupted, "Stand by."

"Flight, Mako. Ready for launch." Kaidan tightened his grip on the control sticks. "Okay, here we go."

*** Glossary ***

APC: Armored Personnel Carrier

BH Board: Binary Helix Board of Directors

DCE: Distributed Computing Environment

ECM: Electronic Countermeasures; devices and software that increase the ability of a vehicle to hide from another vehicles sensors, as well as sensors and software that increase the ability of a vehicle to detect enemy vehicles

EIO: Electronics Intelligence Officer

eks: the letter X

esig: electromagnetic signature

FCO: Fire Control Officer

FTL: Faster Than Light

GCI: Ground Combat Interface

GCTO: Ground Combat Technology Officer (usually spoken as "geck-toe")

IFF: Identification Friend or Foe; technology for differentiating the two

kliks: slang for kilometers

LOSI: Line-of-Sight Intersuit. A telecom protocol used by the Alliance to allow fireteams to communicate with each other over short distances without having to worry about interception. Primary mode of data exchange is optical, but the fallback radio component is also scrambled

LRSA: Long Range Scan and Analysis

LV: Landing Vehicle

LZ: Landing Zone

MCP: Mechanical Counter Pressure. A spacesuit technology first developed in the 1960s to actively apply pressure against the skin of the wearer rather than pressurizing an entire suit. Made practical only in the 2030s, but added to EVA combat gear just before the discovery of the Prothean ruins on Mars.

NfoX: Information Exchange; a technology/protocol used by research organizations and universities for scientific research data collection and dissemination. Pioneered on Thessia, popularized in the Alliance by Husseinomica (part of the Venus Project 2.0) after the Prothean discovery on Mars, acquired by Google in 2173.

NTPM: Network Trusted Platform Module. A device-dependent security protocol that secures an entire network and checks the status of local TPMs as well

OA: Operational Area (or Operational Arena)

One-way: PVR users occasionally find virtualized life better than real life, and set up infrastructure so they don't have to leave it. While they will respond to emails, vidcalls and so on, they do not interact meaningfully with the real world anymore; this practice is variously called, "one-waying," "final dive," "invisible retirement," and others.

OTH: Over the Horizon

PCS: Personal Combat System; a general term for everything from a DCE-equipped camouflaged flexivest to 4-tonne powered-exoskeleton battlesuits, the only common element being its design intent to protect or enhance a single user on the field of battle.

PET: Portable Extranet Terminal

RFT: Request for Transfer

SAR: Search and Rescue

SDK: Software Developer Kit

Sierra Hotel: A compliment issued for exceptionally good work. Stands for Super Hot (or something lke that.)

SOTA: State Of The Art; ECM and other in-use software systems are continually updated by the Alliance. Keeping them up-to-the-minute is important. Almost always spoken as "so'-tah".


	31. Chapter 31: Therum, Landing

A/N - Seems I'm releasing at half my original rate because I'm writing out ahead. I'd apologize, but the chapters are still twice the size of the ones that were biweekly, and nobody's sent any nastygrams; thanks. Several new favorites and follows, though; thanks a lot and welcome!

*** Therum: Landing ***

The view outside _Normandy_'s hangar door rolled and shuddered as the ship descended through more turbulence, but they were under the three-kilometer cloud deck, and the only ground visible looked like a field of volcanoes.

Kaidan watched the Launch Coordinator on his ARO, graphics and numbers following his gaze across the Mako's avionics.

Joker's voice spoke over the 'comm, "Launch in three, two…one…Go!" As he said "go," the catapult made a _zip_ noise right before it accelerated the Mako to the end of the ramp, shoving everyone back into their seats.

There was a disconcerting silence as they hurtled through the air. What had been visible of the ground tilted down and out of view as the Mako entered freefall; the cabin briefly became a zero-gee environment.

Braking jets fired, slowing their forward motion and drop speed. Everyone was shoved firmly forward and down as _Normandy_ roared past overhead.

"Contact in five seconds," Kaidan called out. He paused. "Four…three…braking jets firing…!"

The Mako hit the ground and bounced once, jarring everyone forward again, then squeaked to a stop.

Garrus looked around. "Hey, that was pretty good."

"Thanks," Kaidan said. He moved the control sticks in opposite directions, rotating the Mako in its own length, then stopped to study the ground sitrep on his ARO.

The Mako had landed at the end of a low box canyon composed primarily of reddish volcanic rock. The sky overhead remained clouded and gray, with hints of red reflected from below. In the distance were 3-meter pipes in bright chrome, connecting processing and extraction stations.

Their internal comms crackled briefly as Joker came back on, "Mako, Flight. Commander, we're picking up some strange readings…I mean_ really_ strange, like 'off the damn charts'."

There was an awkward pause as Shepard looked across at Kaidan in disbelief. The biotic looked away from the road just long enough to shrug. Shepard frowned, "Are you kidding me? What am I supposed to do with, 'off the damn charts'? Put Pressly on, will you? Or Gladstone. Or the _Boatswain_."

"All right, keep your hair on." The comm chirped as Joker switched settings, "Sensors, tell the ground team what you told me."

A new voice said, "Sensors here, sir. Sorry about that…I may have gotten a little too technical for the Flight Lieutenant. I'm seeing…uh, lots of the same signals as we saw on Eden Prime. I think the geth are here in force."

Shepard was all business. "Numbers?"

"At least thirty infantry units at the OA. Some bigger ones than we saw on Eden Prime, too…probably mobile artillery."

"Tanks? Rocket Launchers?"

"Both, sir. Looks like two or three units with big eezo-based linacs. Just a moment, sir." The comm went silent.

Shepard glanced at Alenko, gestured ahead. "Let's go."

"Movin' out," Alenko said. The whine of six MilSpec electric motors filled the cabin as the Mako accelerated; the Mako's comm chirped as Tanaka came back on the line. "Sir, Ident says it looks like those heavy launchers are a match for your shields. You might be able to take a couple of direct hits, but they can tear you apart if they get a lock on you."

Shepard put a hand to his ear, taking the call to private mode. "What are we talkin' about here?"

"Almost 80% efficiency at five grams, sir. And big generators, not just multicaps; those things are meant to stay in the field for a _long_ time. But with those esigs, uh…I _can't_ find the eezo that would indicate linacs. There's something really weird about these things. But I _can_ see that they have enough power to throw ten gram slugs at point two cee."

Shepard blanched, swallowed, and shook his head.

A text window opened up on Shepard's ARO: **A. Williams: What's the word?**

"Thanks, _Normandy_. Do you have fixes on the heavies?"

"Yes, sir; I've updated your Nav."

Shepard frowned. "Is that big ship of theirs here again?"

"Negative, sir. If I'd seen that, I'd have told you as soon as I knew."

"Good job, Tanaka. What else do you have?"

"The planet appears to be largely unpopulated…like Io. Got four or five extraction and processing stations with Eldfell-Ashland transponders within five kliks, but there's one that's claiming to be from an asari university…Serris?"

"Serrice," Shepard corrected.

"Serrice University, yessir. Looks like it's only a few kliks northwest of the LZ."

"Thanks, _Normandy_. Let me know if you find anything else." Shepard released the privacy toggle. "All right team, here's the drill." Alenko released the throttle; the Mako rolled freely down the low hill as Shepard continued, "We're going to be up against some heavy artillery. If past experience is a guide, they will be using jacketed rounds with shield-piercing capability, and I don't know how much damage we'll be able to do. Every shot will have to count. Alenko, speed will help only if we can be unpredictable."

Kaidan nodded soberly as the Mako squeaked to a stop.

Shepard glanced over his shoulder. "Williams, you ever kangarooed in a Mako?"

"Not in a Mako, but we had a few M29s at Sargon." She sounded confident. "They don't hop as high, but I did learn how to do it." She glanced down into the cockpit. "I'd like to fire off a few practice shots if we can. Whaddya say, LT?"

Alenko checked the Mako's sensors, "We will partly be advertising our presence, but I think now's a better time than later. I recommend firing towards our eight. Still, the Mako is a little different than the Grizzly. There's a jump jet trigger at your left foot." He reached behind him at armrest height and patted its cage, "And it's enabled now. _You_ stomp it, and it gives you better control over the timing of your shots. Otherwise, the turret's software should keep you steady regardless of where I turn or jump.

"If we switch you to full control, you get the throttle and steering on your left stick." Kaidan stuck a thumb over his shoulder. "Right trigger fires the 5mm, left trigger fires the 10mm cannon. Cyclic on the cannon is about five seconds."

Ash exercised the sticks, "Hey great, and about time." The turret atop the Mako swiveled, its heavy motors growling as the turret panned left and right, the elevated gunnery chair did not. She flipped open the trigger cover on the right stick, "Who says you can't teach an engineer about fighting?"

Shepard glanced over his shoulder, tried to sound hurt, "Hey."

"Probably the same idiots who say you can't teach a soldier about thinking," quipped Tali.

Before Ash could react, Kaidan emulated Shepard's delivery, "Hey."

"All right you clowns," Shepard interrupted, "Let's not get dead. Williams, you wanna normalize your suit to it?"

"Yes, sir." She tapped the foot control, and the Mako bounced on its suspension. She floored it, and the vehicle launched into the air. "Wow! Compared to the Grizzly, this is an aircar!" She hopped the Mako a few more times, and then fired the cannon at the top of its jump. "Controls locked in," she gloated, "This thing is awesome! I could shoot the eyebrows off a wasp at 300 meters!"

Shepard pointed ahead. "Let's go." He leaned back in his seat and lit the console interface as the Mako accelerated. "Williams, you've got the eyes. I want to dig for some intel about this Serrice University expedition."

"I'm on it," Ash said.

They rolled along in silence for a few minutes.

Tali leaned out from the wall and looked forward. Reddish, basaltic igneous formations were everywhere, white clouds of vapor drifting lazily over the surface as if it had just rained on a hot skillet. "It's like we landed in a _volcano_," she said, "Does it all look like this?"

Shepard didn't look up. "From the intel _I_ have, it does. This world is apparently claimed by the Alliance, and there are…" he shook his head, "fifty…maybe sixty mining operations, most of 'em autocorps, all working to strip-mine it to nothing. But there are also Prothean ruins, and the Universities and Council are trying to catalog and record them before they go away."

"Good luck with that," Garrus said.

"No, really. From what I'm seeing here, the Alliance appreciates their potential value. They're letting the researchers and archaeologists take deep sensor readings and mark out the areas that can be worked first. There are warning pop-ups every few seconds."

"Smart," Garrus nodded. He was becoming increasingly unnerved at the krogan's unblinking stare. Though the Mako bounded and lurched its way across the landscape, Wrex hadn't moved since the landing. He finally asked, "Wrex, are you all right?"

The krogan, wearing Blood Pack armor from which the markings looked to have been obliterated with a rock, was filling an enormous percentage of the space in the cabin, but sitting so still he could have been a statue. As the turian spoke, the krogan blinked, and turned his head slightly. "What?"

Garrus articulated more carefully, "Are you all right? I noticed you hadn't moved since we landed. I was hoping you weren't dead."

The krogan laughed heartily, swatted at the turian's chest, "Ha hah! Then you must not be a real turian!" He guffawed and snorted at his own joke, then added, "No, no…I was just resting. Never miss a chance to nap or crap, right? Come on, you've been in the service. Uh…haven't you?"

Garrus' talons played quickly across the armor, examining it for damage by touch alone. "Well, I did my civil service in the Fleet marines." Satisfied the sheen of matte finish had not been marred, he looked up. "Then joined C-Sec. Less actual death, more bureaucratic frgh–" the Mako screeched, seemed to bounce up, and then continued.

"Sorry," Kaidan called back to them. "The terrain is unstable, and GPR is having trouble scanning ahead."

"Yeah, tell me about it," Wrex leaned back, but nodded toward the turian. "As often as I have to go there, you'd think they could give me a break once in a while. Usually takes two days to clear for Wards access. You could go bankrupt paying Presidium prices for berth and board just waiting." He shook his head in recollection, "And people wonder why my rates are so high."

"Have you ever tried the shelters?" Garrus offered, "You don't have to be a refugee to use the dispensers. And they have drawerberths. Some of them even have AutoDocs."

"Yeah…foodpaste if you're a _turian_."

"Or a quarian," added Tali.

"No, they have levo paste, too," Garrus added, "You just have to select it. And they have a good array of flavor-adds. Some of the pelats have open-source competitions for flavor hacking. They use olfactory and chemsamp tech to figure out what things taste like to each other. Did you ever wonder where Kabliss got started?"

"Ehh…" Wrex waved him off. They rode in silence for a moment, the Mako squeaking and rattling as it trundled along. The road was becoming less obvious.

Tali tilted her head as she regarded the krogan. "Have you actually tried dispenser food? It's not just paste, you know. Synthfood gets a bad reputation with the word. You can shortwave it into little crisps, or thermacook it into biscuits or muffins, or—"

"Can you make it into meat?" Wrex interrupted. "I'm a _meat_atarian."

Tali seemed to brighten at the challenge. "Not only _can _you, I have some some process apps that cook up Panto HealthCHON into something that tastes just like mee'dwi in under twenty seconds. It even has the texture."

Wrex sniffed with disdain. "Mee'dwi? That's a snack food."

Tali teased back, "How about shratha? I'll bet I could make it as hard to chew as _that_." She noticed Garrus' slight head movement; he was listening again.

And Wrex knew it, too. "_Turian_ s_hratha? _ Feh. I squish that stuff between my teeth after I've chewed it to liquid. Can't you do something with real texture like…I don't know…like varren?"

Tali wasn't sure where this was going, but she was enjoying herself. "I think I could do that. I'll bet I could even throw in some gravel if you want a real challenge."

"Well, maybe…but it has to be seriously big gravel, not just sand or dirt."

"Now you're just being silly."

Garrus leaned forward so he could see around the krogan. "Well, only partly. As I understand it, krogan cuisine is kind of constrained by field prep issues. On those few occasions when they actually _cook _before they eat, they use whatever's handy, like flamethrowers or by siphoning gel off an incendiary ammodder." He shook his head in recollection. "It's easy to drop something when you're trying to get it to cook evenly, so you end up looking for the tastiest dirt to cook over, 'cause if you don't set it on fire remotely, you _just know_ you're going to drop it at least once."

"Hey, don't knock it 'til you try it," Wrex said to Garrus, "If you overcook something, there's no blood to run down your armor and make you look all terrifying in combat." Wrex thumped his own bloodied chest.

Garrus looked at the krogan as if for the first time, waved vaguely toward the krogan's armor. "Are you telling me this is all because you're a _messy eater_?" Mandibles splayed, he shook his head in mock amazement.

"Well…" the krogan seemed slightly embarrassed. "Not _all _of it." He waved at a splat of dried brown on the red armor near his left shoulder. "You didn't see when I got that one human in a headlock at Chora's Den." He tapped part of the trophy, "I'll bet if you microscope this, you could see what the last thing was that went through this guy's mind. Oh, wait…" Wrex put a hand thoughtfully to his chin, "It was _me_."

Tali smiled to herself, but Garrus seemed thoughtful. "What? Where was he?"

"Behind the security booth to the right of the door," Wrex seemed pleased with himself. "If you don't know there's cover there, you can miss him until it's too late." The unspoken implication was that the krogan had saved the turian's life.

There was almost a minute of silence as Garrus replayed the footage from his suit's NetBite; the turian's fringe contracted slightly. "So it would seem. Uh…nice work, Wrex. Thanks."

"Aw, don't get all weepy on me, ya big baby. I didn't do it for _you_. Who do you think would have to carry you to the hospital? I was just saving myself work."

Tali leaned forward so she could see Garrus. "Hey, wait a minute. Did you just say there's a way to experience the taste of levo food even if you're a dextro?"

"And vice versa," Garrus nodded, glad of a topic change.

"Do they have chocolate?" Tali seemed suddenly interested. "I've heard about it; the humans seem to really love the stuff."

"Yeah, there's chocolate. If you try it, try the _milk_ chocolate. But don't get your hopes up. What makes chocolate so appealing to humans is the endorphins it emulates in their brains."

"Endorphins?" Ash interrupted, "What? Really?"

"Really. It's the same reaction you have when you're in the presence of someone with a genetic structure that fits well with yours. It's all pheromones…you're not conscious of it. Turians don't have many foods that cause the same reaction…which is probably related to why there aren't many fat turians."

"That's just because you store your extra energy as deposits under your collar and torso plates." Tali tapped the base of her neck. "A trim waist is attractive to males, and more deposits make the waist look slimmer, right?"

Garrus tilted his head oddly as he looked suddenly toward Tali. "Well…that's true, but it's not the whole story. Thousands of years ago, a…successful female could attract mates by showing she could kill effectively and reliably; a supportive waist both…uh…indicates and is caused by those _deposits_." He twitched his right mandible unconsciously; he hoped no one noticed. "But the kind of pherochemistry that humans use at distance doesn't really start to work in turians until you get within a few centimeters."

"Which you won't unless the female sees similar deposits on _you_," Wrex nodded. "Humans even have an expression about females like that: _maneater_."

"It's not the same thing," Garrus shook his head, "_Turian_ females don't eat unsuccessful suitors."

"Neither do humans," Ash said quickly.

"Not _usually_," Kaidan added.

Wrex was still looking at Garrus, "Of course not…they leave them for the shratha." He seemed disgusted.

"Seriously?" Tali seemed horrified.

"That hasn't been the case for…tens of thousand of years," Garrus explained quickly, "Flage and thardia growers figured out that the little ones were easy to keep, and made for a reliable food supply. No need to risk your life trying to take down the big prey."

Tali's VI called up images of the small animals native to Palaven as Garrus continued, "And with enough nutrition, you could have the right build to be attractive to a female of…the right temperament. Besides, no one actually keeps a shratha."

"Sure they do…I saw it on a turian vid," Wrex said, "Tanira was her name, I think."

"_No_." Garrus was completely dismissive, "Not even a little. _Wild Empress_ is adolescent fantasy _trash_."

"Hey, these are kind of cute, especially the thardia," Tali said as she scrolled through images, "You mean to tell me you eat them?"

"Oh, they're cute all right, especially when they're little, but they're mean, and they reproduce like crazy."

Ash didn't look away from the targeting systems, "Born pregnant?"

"Eh…not quite…" Garrus looked up toward the gunnery cage, "But they reach sexual maturity in _weeks_."

"What's wrong with that?" Wrex asked.

Garrus shrugged theatrically, "Nothing at all! Who said there was anything wrong with it?"

Wrex laughed, elbowed the turian. "Easy there, spike…just playing with you."

"Yeah, I know," Garrus nodded, checking his armor again.

"You don't have any of that chocolate flavor-add with you, do you?" Tali asked Garrus.

"No, but I carry the DFP file for it," Garrus illuminated his omnitool, waved it subtly. "You never know when you might end up on a ship full of levos, and get stuck with the six default flavors of…well, you know."

"I sure do," Tali agreed. She paused thoughtfully. "You sure know a lot about them," Tali spoke past Wrex toward Garrus. "The shelters, I mean."

"I…spent a lot of time under cover. Had to keep up the look and life for several weeks to build up good street cred, be trusted."

"Trusted? Trusted by whom?"

His fringe contracted slightly. "Some low-lifes. Uh…" he seemed very uncomfortable talking about it, "There are still some people who insist that replacement organs have to be grown _in vivo_ rather than _in vitro_."

"Hmm…" Tali said thoughtfully, "How quaint."

There was a momentary silence. Wrex turned his left eye on the turian. "Do what to _huh_?"

"That just means they have to come from live donors rather than be printed or grown in a lab," Tali clarified. "So what's wrong with that?"

"I'm…uh…well, I shouldn't talk about it. The investigation is…still ongoing."

Tali shrugged, looked around the cabin. "Can I patch into the turret view?" She looked up at Ash. "Chief Williams, does this ground car have a p-net?"

"No," Ash said flatly.

Shepard noticed a signal on the sensor displays, and highlighted it on the virtual windscreen so Kaidan would be sure to see it.

"Uh…actually..." Alenko sounded like he was actually trying to reassure Tali, "Not only does the M35 have a hardened p-net, but I've upgraded it to give you access to the external—ah, hold it…here come our first customers. You ready up there?"

As they pulled up to a stop short of the next ridge, the comms crackled, "Mako, _Normandy_. Uh, stop where you are, sir; Tanaka says the first group is over the next hill."

Shepard didn't look up from the Mako's sensor displays. "Kaidan already saw 'em. And we're stopped. Stand by, we're gonna handle 'em." Shepard lifted his finger from the PTT key on the console, studied the tactical display being transmitted from _Normandy_'s orbit. "Looks like three." He looked up and out the simulated window, with its appearance of an AR overlay giving informative updates. "Chief. Three targets at 170 meters, zero-two-five. Looks like the middle one of 'em's got a missile launcher. I want him out first."

Kaidan lifted his hands off the sticks, "Turret, control is yours."

"Control is mine," Ash gripped the firing controls, grinning angrily. "OTH has a lock on three targets." She tapped the jump jet control and the Mako hopped about a meter into the air; high enough for Williams to see her targets. The main cannon thundered, and one of the geth, dutifully closing on the Mako, disappeared in an explosion.

Text appeared on Shepard's ARO: **K. Alenko: Using a sledgehammer to swat a fly?**

Shepard touched his left thumb to his middle finger, subvocalized, _Kaidan. Maybe, but she's got some understandable issues. I'm guessing this could be therapeutic vengeance. We just have to keep it from getting out of hand._

The Mako leapt into the air again, and another expert shot from Williams detonated another geth mobile rocket launcher. The flaming wreckage continued to burn as it described a graceful arc, bounced, disintegrated.

Shepard looked over his left shoulder; Ash's eyes were obscured by her helmet's PVR mode, but he could see her slightly bared teeth. He heard the jump jets fire, the muffled _thoom_ of the turret's main gun.

_Get them,_ he thought, _Make them pay!_

As the Mako settled back onto its suspension, Kaidan nodded his approval. "Mighty impressive, Chief," he said, "Three shots, three kills."

Her grip on the controls looked firm as she toggled the PVR holograph, looked down at them and grinned. "You ain't seen nothin' yet. Next time, _two_ shots." She flicked her thumb at a virtual toggle, pointed ahead. "Let's go!"

Shepard nodded, but as Alenko pressed the throttle, the turbine-like whine they heard was not coming from the Mako's motors. Shepard looked up quickly. "Air support incoming! Eight high!"

A bug-like vehicle, easily as big as _Normandy_, howled over the peaks to their left, slowing as it approached.

Williams was stunned, "Where did _that_ come from? Why didn't _Normandy_ tell us about it?"

"Must have been on the ground when we got here," Shepard worked the sensors. "Have they seen us?"

The craft yawed slowly to starboard and decelerated further; two smaller metallic shapes dropped from the alien ship, landing with thumps that resounded like gunfire.

"They saw us," Kaidan said dryly.

"Troops…?" Shepard realized, "They're landing troops!"

"We've got no cover," Ash looked quickly to both sides, "There isn't even any I can see!" She spun the gun left and up, and thumbed the firing key. An explosion erupted on the side of the metallic-green ship as the Mako's autoloader fed another slug into the linac and charged the MEFGs. "I don't know what I'm shooting at! Where is it soft?" The cannon shook the Mako again.

Shepard accelerated to 4x, noting the weapons library had no data on this design of ship they were fighting. He gestured for RTM. **Tali, do you have any intel on this kind of ship?**

There was a pause that seemed to take far too long. Shepard continued to search his Library and NetBite for anything else useful.

**VI Analysis of vessel reduced by neurotronics priority. Reducing color depth.**

"Heading for cover; taking control back," Kaidan gripped the control sticks and headed for a clump of rocks to their left.

"You have control," Ash panned the turret as she held the right trigger, drawing a line of fire across the side of the ship with full-auto. Sparks and shrapnel erupted from the side of the geth craft, but didn't even leave scorch marks.

**Tali'Zorah: No. I've never seen a ship like that anywhere. We know the geth have come back through the Veil, but we don't know what they are doing or want. The only reports we have are of small groups. The geth I got that audio clip from were in the Vostok system running a mining operation, not air assault. I'm sorry.**

Alenko slowed and stopped the Mako behind the rocks, switched the Windshield View to Aft. "There's not enough cover here," he realized aloud, "I'm taking us back over that last rise." The Mako accelerated backwards up to the crest of the hill and back into cover…assuming the new ship didn't drop mobile artillery _behind_ them, too.

The Mako's cannon continued to have no visible effect on the buglike ship; the thing continued its slow turn, and began to climb away; presumably it was heading for the dig.

"Dammit!" Ash snarled, "Come back and fight, you cowards!" She spun the turret right and got off one more shot at its "head" before the geth ship managed its escape with a rising screech.

Meanwhile, the lumps of gray metal that had been dropped were unfolding; they reminded Shepard of giraffes. Their main guns were clearly designed to provide "high ground" advantage, even on flat terrain. "Ground units are firing," he noted aloud. Blue bolts flared on the tops of each, but moving at speeds he could follow with unenhanced vision. "Those aren't linacs, they're…something else! Gunnery, take 'em down!"

"Give me the tank," Ash quickly rotated the turret around to port.

The Mako rolled to the top of the hill; Kaidan lifted his hands, letting an onboard VI temporarily drive the Mako as control was made available to the turret. "Gunnery, you have control!"

"I have control!" Ash didn't sound panicked; she nearly sang it. She moved like a machine; gripping the steering lightly with her left fingertips, her right hand toggled to a spectrometer view, and then rolled the Mako forward, jumping over a shot from the geth walker. The cannon began blasting salvos regularly, the smaller "machine gun" firing almost continuously between them as she continued to avoid incoming fire; on the third cannon shot, the geth unit on the right exploded brightly.

"Hah! Got you!" Ash rotated the turret to the other unit and saw it had fired again; she stomped the Jump control, leaping them over the blue bolt. "Pilot, can you get me in closer?" Ash flipped the toggle. "We're not going to get anything useful out of that one."

"You bet," he answered, "I have control," Kaidan said. The Mako turned as Ash continued her assault on the remaining geth artillery unit. Kaidan hopped another shot and turned to face the target, backing up to the top of the hill again.

Shepard kept his attention on the sensor display, tracking the geth vessel as it climbed back to orbit; the Mako launched off the hilltop and bounced down the incline.

Shepard's console chirped at him: The sensor VI concluded that the geth were using a plasma-based weapon probably intended for shielded non-moving targets that simply had to be worn down.

The cannon shook the Mako again, and Ash let out a whoop of victory. "And _that's _why you don't put mobile artillery on _legs_," she gloated as the second walker collapsed. She continued to fire on it until they were too close to fire on it safely. At that point, it was just mangled wreckage.

_Best practice with an unknown_, Shepard mused, _Burn it to ashes and then burn the ashes_. _If it really was an AI, it might still present a threat._

"Stop near that thing," Shepard said as he released his harness, "Alenko, Williams, on sentry. Keep a sharp eye out. Garrus, Tali, you're with me. I want a close look at this tech. Wrex, uh...smoke 'em if you got 'em."

"What?"

"You got five minutes. If you want a biobreak, now's the time."

Wrex snorted a laugh. "Biobreak? I'm good for _days,_ pal."

Shepard grabbed the bar above the low door and jumped out. As he approached the smoking pile of geth, Tali and Garrus followed.

"Sniffer says the atmosphere's unbreathable," Garrus noted. "Even if you _could_ breathe it, it's gonna smell like sulfur."

"Sure does," Tali said.

Garrus turned quickly, "What? How can _you_ smell it?"

"Quarian enviro-suits are almost always equipped with sensor augmentation; mine's automatic. Not just sight and sound, but smell and touch, even in hardsuit mode. I can adjust the sensitivity, too."

Shepard stopped in front of the huge geth, which was still burning. "I'm glad to hear it," he said, "You two are into your own aspects of tech, hopefully complimentary to mine. We don't have a dedicated science team, and I didn't think to equip the Mako before we left. Can you help me analyze this thing?"

"Ha!" Tali laughed, "Try and stop me. I want to find out everything I can about the geth, and find out something new…not just something we forgot, but something the geth have done to themselves, or developed on their own." She crouched as she walked, her omnitool aglow as she scanned the wreckage. "This could be another big break."

"Sounds like we can help each other," Shepard said. He noticed the turian was just standing there. "Don't be shy," he gestured at what was left of the geth walker. "There's room for two."

"Well…yeah, but…um…_geth_?"

"That's what my VI said."

"Definitely geth," Tali looked up from her omnitool. "But this one's slag. I can hardly find a single core cluster." She stood again, still looking at her omnitool, "The energy weapon is interesting, but really inefficient. I wish…I'd sure like to know what _they_ think it's good at before finding out in combat."

Garrus lit his omnitool, waved his palm over the inert mass of twisted, blackened metal. "Hmm…"

"Something interesting?"

"Probably not. My omnitool is tweaked in criminal forensics. DNA, ballistics, prints, thermal signatures. I'm going to have to add back in a field science database. But my military time has me looking at this from a field artillery perspective." He pointed at the smoldering wreckage, "Been a while since I actually saw any, and this looks like exactly what it is: A walker that was hammered at 600 meters." He glanced toward the Mako. "That is one effective weapon."

"In the hands of a competent user," Shepard agreed. He turned to Tali. "So are you finding out anything you didn't already know?"

"No." She sounded dejected as she stood from the smoldering wreckage, "Next time, maybe we can only kill them just _a little_?"

**# # #**

Having launched the ground team, Joker tilted _Normandy_'s nose up, climbing back up to a synchronous "spotter" orbit. This would put the ship within range of the team, able to provide parallax scanning, triangulation, orbital strike, and other combat services.

He nudged the Effective Mass control up, still holding the ship's realized mass under five kilograms. This would give them the ability to ascend the gravitational vector quickly, while requiring less of the heat sinks and thus keeping them hidden more efficiently. He was not quite satisfied with their position yet.

"Flight, Sensors. Got two bogeys changing vector. Now on your SVS."

Joker had noticed the two signals at the same time; he glanced at his infolens to confirm that the stealth systems were engaged. "Got 'em, Sensors; good work. You sure they're hostiles?"

"No IFF or transponders, Comm says the one now climbing to orbit from the surface dropped troops on the ground team. The other is moving to intercept them, probably at the OA."

"That's pretty hostile, alright. Where's Pressly? Why didn't he–" Joker cut himself off, "Crap." He studied the callout on the unknown climbing to orbit. "We have any idea what that thing is?"

"Not directly, sir; Active will give us away. Real big for an LV, kind of small for a troop carrier. Doesn't look like it's in a hurry, though."

"He probably doesn't know we're here," Joker grinned to himself.

Pressly's voice sounded over the Command Channel, and from the PA system with a few milliseconds' delay: "Red Alert. Red Alert. All hands to combat stations. This is not a drill. Flight, maintain stealth and configure for Atmospheric Flight Geometry. Weapons, design long range attacks on both ships, prioritize the one on ascent. Engineering, I want full stealthed delta vee available in thirty seconds." He repeated the order as Joker began to study the situation details.

A red arc appeared over the planet shown in Joker's SVS display, describing a ballistic flightpath that would allow _Normandy_ to quickly attack both ships without detectably compromising their stealth, or staying on the same vector from which the attack had been launched.

Joker switched channels angrily. "Weaps, Flight. Belay that, we're too high for AFG. I'm declaring Flight Command. Redesign firing solutions for IFG, I will be taking us to…uh…" He selected a point in space using the SVS, "Zenith twenty Kilo, same relative azimuth. I want them as far away from the ground team as possible. Weaps, is that firing solution ready on Bogey One?"

"Aye, sir; target locked in."

Pressly ran onto the bridge and hurled himself into the Navigation chair. "Keep it simple," he cautioned. "They'll be evaluating our tactics and technology, we don't want to give away any more than necessary. Hit the empty one first because he'll have higher potential delta vee."

"And he's closer." Joker held down the mute on his 'com and added, "Thank you, Captain Anderclone. Like I didn't know that." He twisted the controls in opposite directions, pitching the ship forward as range decreased, precisely aligning the guides until they changed to red. "Ready on Target One."

Pressly checked the reload time, and relative angles on the anticipator. The computer added a series of position-versus-speed scenarios in a rainbow of colors on his console. He touched the green one, sliding it toward an icon for the Weapons Station. "Weaps, design for Bogey Two, designated Target Two. I want to hit the heavy one ASAP; before he has a chance to return fire."

"Target Two locked in," the Weapons Officer's voice answered immediately. "Designed for optimal firing with retargeting time."

Joker glanced at the plan and nodded. "Firing solutions look good, I can make that transition without getting fancy. We can expect to get off only one shot before they get a good lock on our vector, but we might as well give them something to shoot at." He reached into the space ahead of himself, designing a course for the ship. "Okay, compute for Two using that. Ready to fire four on Target One. I repeat, fire four on Target One. Six seconds. Five…"

Below and aft of the bridge, _Normandy_'s single Mass Effect Railgun system received electronic commands; minute adjustments were made to the aim, compensating for vibrations in the ship. A control sequencer waited until the last possible instant, signaling LIDAR to paint the target, directed charges to the eezo modules and magnets along the eight-meter length of the accelerator, and then shoved a 64-gram pointed cylinder of titanium metamaterial down into the end of the shaft.

As it was loaded, the rod fractured precisely into a row of nested cones. An actuator hammered the back end of the shaft 170 times over nine tenths of a second, propelling each hollow cone vertex-first into the first accelerator node at the back of the accelerator, and then advancing the rod forward. The node contained an arrowhead-shaped cell of element zero that – when charged – emitted a field that reduced the effective mass to that of a few electrons, and supercharged magnets that accelerated it forward.

Four millimeters down the shaft, the next node – rotated minutely clockwise with respect to the one behind it to add some spin – kept the mass reduced with its eezo module, and imparted more speed on the cone with its own magnets. This was repeated along the rest of the linac "barrel" until the cone was expelled from the end of the main gun at thirty-three percent of the speed of light. It was immediately followed by the other 169 cones, the formation burning brightly in the reduced upper atmosphere of the planet. The result looked like a spear of red-tinted light, and was followed by three others.

The weapons intelligences aboard _Normandy_ had evaluated the LIDAR data and adjusted the aim of the railgun by fractional arc-seconds to target the geth ship's reactor core using its emissions as a guide. The pointed tips of the cones slammed into the target, overloading shields, shattering armor, burning composites, destroying everything in their path. Million-degree plasma erupted from the middle of the ship in a blossom of orange and white as the convoluted toroidal reactor vessel failed.

The ship broke into two large sections that continued to climb, but the laws of ballistics were already at work; they climbed until the planet's relentless gravity overcame their inertia, and then they plunged into the gravity well, tumbling through the thick atmosphere.

Meanwhile, the other geth ship had collected enough data from _Normandy_'s first two shots to determine the attacking ship's vector, and the third shot verified it.

Sensors focused on the area, and outboard cannons powered up and came to bear, aiming at where the invisible attacker would have been. Focused electromagnetic sensors reported nothing; the weapons were directed to fire a spread across the possible paths the ship was likely to have taken, assuming it had changed its course after firing.

_Normandy_'s sensor operator watched as fire was returned. "They're firing where we were; very quick response time, sir." Raymond Tanaka looked toward the pilot's seat. "Looks like they had no idea you were going to backtrack on them, though they did fire a spread out ahead of us." He studied the silhouettes captured by the ship's optics of the fast-moving munitions for a few seconds. "Nothing that would have gotten through our shields, but I think they were just trying to figure out where we were before they fire anything significant. But they were _real fast_, sir; like they were expecting it."

Pressly spoke over his shoulder, "Of course they were, they saw the Mako and sent ground forces after them. There had to be something to bring it, all they had to do was wait."

Joker had maneuvered the ship around to be where their initial vector would have put them, and the geth would be left to wonder how they had simply missed. "Firing solution for Two is in queue," Joker said, "Firing time coming up in four. Three…"

Pressly agreed, "Fire Control, take 'em out."

The FCO waved her finger through a holographic key. "Firing."

Three more spears of light leapt across the distance separating the two ships; Joker directed _Normandy_ higher.

"Three hits," reported Tanaka, "But their shields held. They must have powered up after our first attack."

"Crap, they were just waiting for us to show them what we can do," Joker glanced at the heat sink status, and rotated the ship on its internal gyro, aligning for a high-efficiency thrust.

"They're firing again," Tanaka reported, "Larger spread, more rounds." The ship juddered slightly, as if taxiing over gravel.

"Shields holding," Pressly observed. "But they're sure to know where we are now. Helm, evasive."

"Evading, aye. Lock on Two and prepare to fire in…eight seconds," Joker couldn't spare the time to snipe at the XO. "Weaps, hit 'em hard this time, I'm diving in close. Don't want to miss."

Thrust rings glowed as the engines accelerated the ship toward the planet; by continuing to turn the ship and steering the engine nacelles toward center, Joker kept the detectable thrust behind _Normandy_'s silhouette.

The FCO touched a control. "Firing six."

The main gun fired six times as _Normandy_ closed the distance to the geth ship. The first three bursts dissolved against kinetic barriers, the next two burned along the thrust axis, clearing the way for the sixth, which found its way to the reactor. A plume of searing blue-white exploded forward, propelling the ship backward, and a jet of core materials toward _Normandy_'s firing position.

As soon as the last shot had been fired, Joker steered up and to port, rotating the ship to present a smaller cross-section and keep the stronger forward shields between them and the geth. The sentient ship erupted in a blaze of light and shrapnel.

"Splashed two," Joker gloated. "Heading back to Spotter Orbit."

"Travel lightly," Pressly said over his shoulder. "We may not have seen all the attackers. LRSA didn't show these guys; there may be more."

Joker checked his displays, gestured for contingency analysis. "We can go straight back and be on station in about three and a half minutes, or continue around the planet to flush any bad guys out in about 30 minutes. What's the order?"

"The ground team will be at the AO long before then. We'll stay in support mode."

"Returning to Spotter Orbit," Joker said.

Pressly thought for a few seconds, and then put two fingers to his ear. "Air Boss, Bridge. I want a sensor drone launched ballistic around the far side of the planet to intercept us at our Spotter Orbit. Signal when ready for launch."

The wall speaker replied, "Thought you might want that, sir. Drone is in launch position."

"Sierra Hotel, Kobunde. Launch drone."

**# # #**

Salarians have their own native tongue, with a range of sounds and noises from a trilling chirp to a gutteral croak. Most humans who heard the full spectrum coming from a single speaker often find it bafflingly diverse, hysterically funny, or both. But if the conversation had been rendered into Alliance English, it would have sounded something like this:

Battle-scarred veteran: "Reached mandatory retirement age two years ago, still too much to do. Invoked Clear and Present Danger clause to remain on Active status."

The administrator nodded. "Yes. Assisted at review board hearing. Unanimous motion due to exemplary service."

"Genophage project still active. Long-term results unknown. Must invoke CPD again to remain active."

"Board approved. But vetoed by STG superiors. Consider genophage project closed, results satisfactory."

"Fft! Project not complete. Species viability still not determined. Evolutionary effects unknown. Social effects still barely understood. All require long-term monitoring."

"Yes. But superiors annoyed at…extracurricular activities. Concerned of cognitive decline or…eccentricity."

"Irrelevant! Mission success rate higher with experience, and higher still with neural enhancements and cybernetics!" Mordin tapped his extended collar with an opposition digit. "Strongly advise general use by all STG agents!"

"The body still ages, Doctor. Superiors consider you highly capable…but not as capable as younger agents."

"Know monitoring sites from project deployment. Know Tuchankan environment from decades of operations. Have always been field agent. Should remain field agent, like Kendig. Genophage project not complete!"

"Kendig is board member with Field status, and authority to keep it. Last field operation was three years ago."

Mordin paused for almost half a second, gathering his thoughts. The exchange became rapid-fire:

"Could go dark."

"No openings."

"Could overrule."

"Board support not unanimous."

"Could ignore."

"Not crazy."

"Objection."

"Expected this; consider their decision to be ill-informed, but Board has revoked my authority to do so."

Doctor Mordin Solus nodded, rose from the chair, and bowed. "Has been honor working with you."

The bureaucrat rose and bowed even more deeply. "Honor has been mine, Doctor. Wish you every success. Glad to see you are not burning the tree you have climbed."

"Thank you, Administrator. Good day."

Mordin knew his data was safely duplicated, and any favorite equipment was fairly easily reproduced, so he simply walked out of the building, knowing the sensors and guards would not let him back in, at least not in a professional capacity. He stroked his chin as he rode a slidewalk to the public transit station, then took the train home.

Into a few interlocking cases, he packed a library of biobricks, a few billion species of synthetic microbiota, and a sensor fabricator, then checked that his hardware subscriptions were paid up before checking himself out of the flat.

At the spaceport, the ticket kiosk did not know that Jaless Homdi had a missing horn; it did not even know that a one-way ticket to Erinle was a roundabout way of getting to Omega.

*** Glossary ***

AFG: Atmospheric Flight Geometry; compared to IFG, AFG optimizes the profile for lower friction, and higher thrust efficiency to provide greater maneuverability in the high friction of an atmosphere.

AO: Operational Area (sometimes Operational Arena, depending on the dialect); the location of an intended operation, even if remote from the LZ or DZ.

delta vee: change in velocity [see _velocity_]

DFP: Dextro Food Printer

DZ: Drop Zone; the location where personnel or supplies are dropped, which will usually be remote from the AO if the operation is covert

GPR: Ground-Penetrating Radar

Infolens: a translucent display of ship instrumentation that follows the general gaze of the user, but supplies them with preferred realtime data that the user has chosen, or that VI monitors determine to be critically relevant

IFG: Interplanetary Flight Geometry; compared to AFG, IFG aims the main drives in a wider spread so as to allow easier attitude control in a vacuum, extends sensor arrays to get better detection at longer ranges.

Kabliss: a neurosensor product that calculates absorption rates for nutrients versus flavor; over time, it optimises foods for one's personal microbiome, and even curates internal flora and fauna

kliks: kilometers

LIDAR: Laser Radar, technically Light Detection And Ranging

LRSA: Long Range Sensor Analysis

LV: Landing Vehicle

LZ: Landing Zone

MEFG: Mass Effect Field Generator

mee'dwi: Native to Palaven, this slow-moving, armored animal is shaped like a sausage with ten to twenty sets of legs; the species is ancient, in some ways analogous to trilobites of Earth

NetBite: similar to internet cache data, a Netbite is gathered by a VI from the extranet (and from user sensors such as cameras, microphones, omnitools, etc.) in anticipation of user needs in the future; the size varies by user, but 270 exabyte NetBites are not uncommon in 2183

OTH: Over the Horizon

Panto HealthCHON: Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen, and Nitrogen make up practically all food, and the feedstock slabs of it (colloquially, "CHON") are used in food printers everywhere; Panto TCI makes a variety of CHON that includes trace elements, thus their claim to "HealthCHON"

Pelats: long-term residents of shelters, derived from a turian word for _vagrant_, but when rendered into Thesserit, less charged with the negative connotation.

PTT: Press To Talk; a manual communications control rather than voice activated (VOX)

shratha: a very dangerous, intelligent predator, native to Palaven, often hunted for sport by adventurers,

sitrep: situation report

SVS: Synthetic Vision System. A 360-degree Virtual Reality mode that reduces everything to computer-generated imagery [CGI]. Prevents overloading glare, allows VI-controlled imagers to highlight potential threats at greater distances regardless of location.

TCI: Thessian Collective Interest, the closest analogue to a corporation under asari republic law

varren: also known as "fishdogs," these vicious predators double as nuisance pets and a food source

velocity: speed plus direction; note that it is always _both_

VOX: voice-operated transmission (the word "transmit" being shortened to Xmit provides the "X" because the prefix "trans" means "across," and the "X" is a kind of cross;) the microphone engages when the user starts speaking, freeing up hands for other tasks

XO: Executive Officer


	32. Chapter 32: Therum, Incursion

A/N: Sorry for the protracted delay. A trip to India ended with a trip to the ER. As a form of apology, I promise to finish another chapter this week.

*** Therum, Incursion ***

"That can't have been all of them." Shepard put two fingers to his ear. "_Normandy_, are you still reading geth between us and the university dig?"

"Yes, sir. But they seem to be in groups. And they're really hard to spot in the buildings. It looks like the university has sublet some of the Eldfell-Ashland infrastructure, and the geth have begun infiltrating it since you landed."

"Infiltrating? But they're software. Are they going to turn the facility itself against us?"

"Hard to say, sir. But they're fabricating weapons in place. It looks like they're trying to defend the dig site, or at least slow you down."

"All right. Thanks, _Normandy_. Mako out." Shepard frowned at the sensor displays. "I'm not seeing anything from the omnitool locator. I don't know if that means we're looking in the wrong place, or if we're too late."

Garrus operated his own omnitool locator. "In either case, why would the geth be here?"

"They may be fighting a delaying action, keeping us from figuring out where they took the asari," Wrex suggested.

Ash continued to scan the horizon for enemies. "Does this thing have any OTH weapons?"

"Nope," Kaidan said. "Costs too much mass doing ordnance dumps on the way back. But we have _Normandy_, and can _call down fire from heaven_ any time we need it."

Shepard continued to monitor the Mako's sensors. "True, but that's a card I don't want to play until we seriously need it. Every time they have to fire, they give away where they are, and the performance envelope of that new high-tech ship becomes more known to potential enemies." He adjusted the viewer as Kaidan let the Mako roll to a stop. "Looks like we found the front door, though."

"Incoming!" Kaidan hopped the Mako, and backed up once they were on the ground again.

Nearby rocks exploded, hit by incoming fire. "That door's got _turrets_," Ash said. She thumbed the trigger, and the cannon fired, shaking the entire APC. "We should probably peek and fire."

Shepard didn't look up from the console. "Looks like at least two turrets here, and about…a thirty or fourty mechs on the other side of that gate."

Kaidan was already retreating the Mako behind a rock formation. "We gotta get through there somehow."

"If you can't get through the door, try a window," Tali said. "Is there another route this thing will fit through?"

"There's a path to the right," Garrus said. He had begun using the Mako's external cameras as soon as he found out Kaidan had made them available. "It's tight, but I think we can fit."

Kaidan looked at Shepard. "What's the word?"

"Not much room to maneuver," Shepard agreed. "But the map says we can do it. I still want some CYA. Garrus, Wrex, get out there and defend our flank; I want the turret firing forward. Tali, go with them; let's find out how well your cracking tech works. Use channel Bravo, scrambler synch on Detective…uh, on Garrus."

Garrus had lifted his restraint and was securing his weapons to his armor. "On it."

Wrex had grabbed his weapons and was already moving to the starboard door. "Don't take too long, princess." He bashed the Door Open stud with the butt of his shotgun, and jumped into the space under and to the right of Ash's gunnery chair, clattering his way through it.

The turian waved toward the door, spoke to Tali. "This could be a lot easier if you can turn them against each other; I'll keep you covered while you're working."

"Thanks," Tali said, fitting her weapons to her suit's hardpoints. "This should be interesting." She jumped down through the tiny Kiggs field at the starboard door; Garrus followed.

"They're out," Ash said, reaching for the door control.

Kaidan checked a camera view to confirm the three contractors were not between the wheels. "And they're clear." An aft camera showed them scrambling up the side walls for high ground.

"Comm check," Shepard said, "You all receiving?"

"Yeah, I hear you," Wrex's voice said over the Mako's internal speaker.

"_Radio_ check good," Garrus added.

"Tali'Zorah here."

"Engage at range," Garrus said, "We don't want friendly fire once they're cracked. Tali, follow me up and left. Fireteam, switch to channel Bravo."

Shepard pointed ahead through the artificial windshield. "Let's go."

Kaidan rotated the Mako in its own length, then raced across the opening that faced the main gate; Ash got off a single shot from the cannon, scoring a hit one of the turrets.

They could hear the geth turrets firing after them as they crawled along the narrow passage. It was slow going.

Kaidan scowled. "What's that scaffold thing? You think they were building something here?"

"We've got signals in front and behind," Shepard read from the sensors, "Gunnery, can you handle them?"

"If we don't get stuck here," she replied. "I've got a bad feeling about this."

"Incoming," Kaidan said casually. "Rocket launcher at twelve o'clock."

The vermillion geth in front of them fired a missile and ducked behind cover. The missile exploded against the Mako's kinetic barriers, but the force shoved the Mako backwards.

"Shields at 96%, regen active," Shepard said. "The geth that were behind the gate are now coming around both sides," He looked up from the sensors. "They can't move those turrets, but there are mobile launchers on this side." He glanced over his shoulder.

"Got targets ahead," Ash said, "Can I have the tank?"

Kaidan added the sensor data to his windscreen simulation. "You got it. You see something I don't?"

"I want that scaffold out of the way." She backed the Mako up a few meters and held the left trigger; the 5mm spat fire, but the scaffold persisted. "What the hell's this?" She fired the cannon again; still no reaction.

"The geth have Impervium?" Shepard was impressed…and concerned. "I thought _we_ were still trying to figure the stuff out."

"Thought so, too," Kaidan squinted at the display.

"This is the same problem we had on Eden Prime with those spikes," Shepard remembered.

Ash turned and fired again. "It's a trap! They've positioned it so we can't kangaroo from cover!"

"They can't have already put that up after seeing us do it to those walking artillery units." Kaidan turned to Shepard. "Can they?" The 5mm began firing continuously.

"Sure looks that way." Shepard held fingers to his ear. "Fireteam, sitrep."

"They're wall to wall back here," Garrus answered, "But they're – unh! – they're packed so tight that Tali's hack is working on multiple bad guys at a time."

The 5mm "machine gun" did not stop firing as the 10mm cannon thundered again; there was briefly a hole through the crowd of robots ahead of them, but parts scattered as the relativistic bullets tore through more of them.

"Still plenty of 'em on the edges," Wrex said over the comm. "Am I going to do this all myself?"

"It's almost like they're trying to use a swarming attack," Shepard thought aloud. "Their numbers probably let them use that effectively on Eden Prime."

"Fireteam, watch your backs; they might try to crawl over the rocks," Kaidan said.

Ash continued to follow the Target Designator on her HUD, "Damn, how many of these guys are there?"

"Keep it up, they're getting thin," Shepard said. "Fireteam, we have cleared the courtyard and are advancing into it. We're going to try to open the gate from this side."

There was no reply.

"Fireteam, are you there?"

Garrus sounded strained, "Yes. Affirmative." He sounded out of breath.

"Are you okay?"

"We had a rush; Wrex took some fire. Tali's keeping them busy."

"I'm fine," Wrex snarled. "_Hit_ doesn't mean _hurt_."

"They nearly blew your head up," Tali sounded as if she were explaining to someone who hadn't been there.

"Krogan are naturally armored, I just head-butted a missile, that's all. Look, the bleeding's almost stopped."

Shepard paused, then asked, "Are you still fighting geth?"

"Not anymore," Tali's voice answered from the speaker, "I cracked one of the turrets. It took down everything else and then blew itself up."

"It was actually rather impressive," Garrus added. "I thought a turret would be harder to hack."

"It's only _hacking_ if you don't know what you're doing," Tali added. "_Cracking_ is a science, and much harder than random _hacking_."

As the Mako rolled to a stop in the courtyard, the gate to their left clunked noisily and retracted into the barricade ramp. Tali said, "Hah! That was easy. Come on, you two! The gate's open!"

"Rocks, dirt and lava. Reminds me of home." Wrex jogged through the opening. "It looks like there's a garage on either side of this thing. Might be some stuff we can grab."

"Negative," Shepard was looking ahead. "Get aboard the Mako. The geth know we're here, and they might have left booby-traps. They've been here a lot longer than we have. I don't want to spend any more time here than necessary."

As Wrex clambered noisily aboard, the speaker crackled, "Watch out, sir; there are more of those walking artillery units on sentry, in your path and within a kilometer of you."

"Two just ahead over that rise, and two around the next bend in the road," Shepard read from his displays. "Thanks, _Normandy_. We've got 'em."

Garrus was boarding, but Tali was standing with one hand on the oversized tire forward of the hatch, pointing ahead. "I told the controller to open all four gates," she said over LOSI, "I didn't encounter any resistance from geth runtimes."

"Great, let's get moving before they change their minds," Garrus extended a claw down to help Tali into the Mako.

"You bet we got 'em," Ash said. She slid her thumb back and forth across the firing control. "I'm rackin' 'em up today." Once they were aboard again, Kaidan rolled the Mako through the next gate.

They hadn't gone even fifty meters before slowing again; the ground had almost dropped away below them and the road – what there was of it – seemed to lead just along the edge of a lake of molten sulfur. 3-meter supply pipes blocked their way on the other side. Kaidan pointed to the right; the displays showed one of the big, four-legged cannons panning its sensor head back and forth as if checking for targets. "There they are, on sentry. Looks like they haven't seen us yet."

Ash manipulated the sticks; the turret whirred as it turned. "I've got a good lock, I might be able to take it down before it knows we're here."

"Take the shot," Shepard said.

The cannon fired, and an explosion erupted on the walker.

Before the fireball had cleared, a blue bolt emerged from it, headed for the Mako.

"Look at that." Kaidan shook his head. "Whatever it's firing is _slow_." He rolled the Mako back slightly. "I mean really slow. And it looks like it's LOS…_and_ unguided."

"And _damn_, it's tough." Ash fired the cannon again; the walker's "head" exploded.

"Doesn't even _look_ like a munition, it looks like a directed energy weapon," Shepard added as the blue bolt finally reached them, exploding nearby rock.

"There's another one," Kaidan said.

"Yeah, I got it," Ash nodded. "But I'd rather be in closer."

Kaidan drove forward. "Got those two on the left," he said, "I can just crawl forward; that other one over this hill is moving too slowly to get a lock on us anytime soon."

With Kaidan rolling the Mako ahead a few meters at a time, four shots from the cannon demolished the two walkers on the other side of the glowing orange lake. "This feels too easy," Ash said. "But I still can't take 'em down with just one shot, not even when I hit the neck directly. I'm telling you, these things are _tough_."

"Only one left is just over the rise," Kaidan said. You want control, or can I run past them as you take 'em out?"

"Let's go for speed this time," Ash studied the images on her HUD. "The stabilizers on this are _way_ better than a Grizzly. I want to see how well they let me track when _I'm_ the moving target."

The geth walker made no effort to anticipate where they were going; it still took two direct hits to bring the thing down.

Ash growled in irritation.

"Good work, Chief," Shepard nodded with satisfaction as the Mako made the turn. "I don't care if it takes two hits; you brought 'em down."

**# # #**

The New Consensus noticed the human assault vehicle making short work of the ground forces sent to retrieve the asari's daughter; the second unit of infantry platforms had been destroyed before landing by a human starship, presumably the one that had brought the APC. New platforms were already under construction, runtimes had been restored from network mirror instances.

Sovereign had not been forthcoming about the technology behind its energy weapons; over the five years since they had begun to attempt developing similar weapons, progress by the New Consensus had been slow. Armatures had been equipped with the current technology, but the results had been suboptimal.

_Orbital strike timing failure  
Earth assault vehicle progress may be halted by blocking road  
Dispatch platforms with explosives to collapse granite outcropping [location coordinates encrypted]  
Prepare to defend subterranean dig site access against ground assault:  
Armature H5L8972VV6E with 19 runtimes  
Armature 4145RJ8GRX-90 with 18 runtimes  
Sniper 6UEW229U5.W with 7 runtimes  
Sapper R83V5LQX303 with 6 runtimes  
Troop S5VP9QQ3F with 4 runtimes  
Troop I1LU3893-665M with 5 runtimes_

**# # #**

"Keep an eye out for more geth," Kaidan accelerated the Mako, reading from the augmented windshield simulation. "I don't like this bottleneck; this tunnel thing crosses over an unstable area. I'd guess they're guarding the entrance because there's no other way past."

"There are civilian warnings all over it," Tali said. "It looks like there's an active lava field, with molten sprays and all kinds of hazards. I'll bet it's really beautiful…and dangerous. Oh! There are windows if you want to stop and look…but…I suppose you don't want to do anything except get past it."

"The number of geth we've seen so far has me worried about whether this asari is still here. And I've still got no signal on the locator. We'll have time for science and sightseeing later," Shepard agreed.

The Mako raced past the two fallen walkers and climbed the low rise to the tunnel entrance. Tali kept her suit's sensors focused on the two geth, hoping for some critical data, but didn't get it.

"Chep," she muttered as they raced into the covered bridge. "I hope we can go back and look at those two units after this is all over."

"No promises," Shepard answered. "Primary objective is the asari, and at this point, we might need to start tearing the AO apart for clues. These might be troops they left behind to slow us down, though. If the geth have already left, we'll have to get back to the ship and configure for tracking."

Tali frowned to herself silently as they raced along the covered tunnel. "My people have searched many generations for a world to call home. If we landed on this planet..._weeee'd_ just keep searching."

"Hell of a place," Kaidan agreed, "But at least it's a _dry_ heat."

"Even the geth wouldn't want to live in this heat."

"Someone is just around the bend there," Shepard said.

"Yep, got 'em," answered Ash.

"Check your targets, remember we're looking for civvies here."

"Whatever it is, it doesn't read like an organic."

"Good," Shepard agreed. "Just remember to check. It's a lot harder to unkill a colonist."

She grinned. "Copy that…but this isn't a colonist; this ass is grass." She thumbed the firing stud, deliberately hitting the far wall of the covered bridge; the explosion blew farther back into it and effectively "around the corner" at the two closing geth.

"They're still moving," Tali was focused on her reinterpreting the Mako's sensor data. "But you _did_ knock them both down."

"Steer left, will you, LT?"

The Mako swerved to the other side of the covered bridge, offering the turret a direct shot at the geth. Another round from the cannon dispatched the two androids.

"Looks like two more of them just beyond the end of tunnel," Shepard said, "Gunnery, you got 'em?"

"I got 'em."

The geth had set up freestanding barricades; though the Mako's cannon could not destroy them, the force of the impact destroyed the androids behind them easily.

Tali piped up, "Did anyone else just read that seismic disturbance? But it's…wait…I think something big just hit the ground. Like something crashed."

Shepard put two fingers to his ear, "_Normandy_, Mako. Did you just take out a bad guy?"

Gladstone's voice answered from the overhead speaker, "Affirmative, Mako. Two geth ships, about 37 kilotonnes each."

"One of them just hit the ground a few kliks from here."

"Affirmative, Mako. That was a bad guy. Current track says second one should be about fifty seconds behind it, but it should land even farther away from you."

Joker's voice added, "Hey, always nice to know gravity still works."

"Good to know. Thanks, _Normandy_. Mako out." Shepard continued to operate the sensor suite. "Gunnery, four more on the ground. Looks like two mobile launchers, a single trooper, and one of those big walkers."

**# # #**

"An heir and a spare?" The Illusive Man studied the holographic image of Henry Lawson.

"Well, let's just say I'm not sure she wants what I've given her. I keep trying to steer her, help her, show her all that she can do, but I think she's just…" He stopped, looking faraway. "I think she thinks of it as _control_."

"Didn't you, when it was your parents?"

"That's different," Henry waved dismissively. "They didn't have the same plans I do, nothing like the same goals."

Though it was still under construction, The Illusive Man paced the length of his office. High-resolution displays were being laminated on the wall – not quite art for art's sake, but close enough – that would look like a window on the universe. The terapixel display would be almost sharp enough that he could walk up to it and inspect it with a hand lens and fail to see that it was not a window.

Walking under the scaffolding, he took a drink from his glass, swirled the cubes in thought. "I'd sure like to help you. But it does sound like you want the control. Maybe even _need_ it. Otherwise, anyone could take over for you."

Henry nodded, looking at him again. "Exactly. That's why it was important for her to not have her DNA randomly mixed up with a mother's. She'll have the same neuro tendencies that I do. She'll be as much like me as possible. At least, that's what I'd hoped."

"Still, it's no guarantee. It's just a starting place. Her behaviors have ultimately been shaped by her interactions with the world, including you."

Henry scowled. "Right. It's the _No Guarantee_ part that I forgot about…or didn't want to acknowledge. At least not at this stage. When I made her, I made as many as possible…just in case. For spare parts, or for…replacement."

The Illusive Man tilted his head. "Isn't it a little late for that?"

Henry smiled confidently. "It would have been, but I had them incepted at five year intervals. And Miranda doesn't know about Nefertiti or Oriana yet."

Jack – who didn't think of himself as "illusive" – paused to consider the names he had just heard. "M…N…O…how many zygotes did you have made? And did you lose that many just getting to this stage?"

Henry folded his arms. "Nobody's ever done this before. _Of course_ I've made some mistakes. But if we let a failure stop us, we'd never get anywhere." He scowled. "I don't know how many are still in cryo, but I'm sure it's in the hundreds. I didn't know what the learning curve would look like."

Jack nodded agreement as he walked across the room. "Of course." He paused, in case Henry still had more to bewail. "So…the reason for my call. Did you get a chance to look at the Andromeda Initiative data I sent you?"

"Yes, and I don't mind telling you it seems awfully expensive and short-sighted. D'you realize that only one percent of the stars in the galaxy are readily accessible by mass relay? We don't need to go a million light-years to get more resources, we just need to open more mass relays, or start building them ourselves."

**# # #**

As the Mako raced up the ramp of a second covered bridge, Shepard worked the sensor array controls. "Two more MMLs and a trooper and end of this bridge."

"Got 'em locked in," Ash said. "Stop before we get to the end of it, will you?"

"You bet. Want the tank?"

"I have control."

Ash hopped the Mako, firing at the barricades. The geth troops and missile launchers burned as they disintegrated, bouncing and skidding along the red-brown basaltic landscape. Kaidan drove over the wreckage and around the toppled barricades, heading toward the dig site.

Garrus wondered aloud, "If they already have the asari, why are they working so hard to defend the site?"

"Conquest," Ash replied. "They take what they can get."

"That's _your_ theory," Tali said. "It's more likely they're trying to wipe out all organic life, like they did to us."

"I know what _that's_ like," Wrex rumbled. He glanced sideways at Garrus.

Garrus noticed. He paused to think before answering, "Nobody's committed genocide except the krogan, when you wiped out the rachni, and that was just because they couldn't be stopped any other way. Your people did the galaxy a great service. But when Kreddik and his armies just _decided_ they needed more garden worlds, we fought them until they stopped. And then _we_ stopped."

"We weren't making them leave," Wrex turned his right eye toward the turian.

"But you were burning up all the resources, the water, the arable land."

"We just used it better. Survival of the fittest."

"All right, knock it off," Shepard said. "Stay focused on the mission. We're trying to get Saren. This isn't the time to hash out this sort of stuff. It's especially not the time to start fighting with each other."

They rolled along in silence for a moment, until the found themselves approaching a pile of rubble, mostly large stones about 30-60cm across. Kaidan slowed and stopped the Mako. "Hm. What's going on here?"

"Nav shows this is the service road," Shepard adjusted the display. "This looks deliberately collapsed."

"We're kicking their robot asses, and they know it," Ash said. "C'mon, LT, let's hop that thing and get this show on the road."

"They're jamming our sensors, but it looks like they have a few troops on the other side," Shepard hadn't looked up from the console. "Probably the demolitions unit."

"Don't underestimate them," Tali cautioned. "Remember, geth are software. The androids are just tools. As soon as the charges were set off, they probably replaced the demolitions software with sniper or infantry software."

"Get over that hill too slow or too fast, and you'll be exposing the soft underbelly of this thing," Wrex warned. "They may be trying to stop the tank, but they've also set themselves up to hit you where you're weak."

Ash looked down and right, toward Shepard. "We've got combat-grade _shields_, sir."

"Yeah, but he's right; the emitters are on the top. We're like a turtle."

Garrus continued to use the exterior cameras to look for threats. "If they're trying to slow us down, it's working."

Kaidan nodded to himself as he looked up from the Operations VI display. "If we get a running start, a one-second burst from the return booster can give us enough extra thrust to get over it, and I can time it to keep the nose low. That'll keep the shields where we need them."

"We'll still have plenty of boost to get back aboard _Normandy_, right?"

"Sure thing, sir."

"Good. Then let's hop this fence and keep rolling."

Kaidan put the Mako in reverse, backing up about thirty meters, then raced forward, jumping over the makeshift barricade. Two shots plinked off the Mako's shields as they hurtled over the top of the ridge.

"They saw us," Kaidan said.

"Oops. Didn't expect six of them," After a blast from the cannon, Ash began firing continuously.

Kaidan steered left, hopped the Mako, and backed up. "We've got no easy retreat, there's no room to maneuver, and no cover!"

"Shields at eighty percent function," Tali said.

Kaidan continued to drive crazily across the landscape.

"Bad guy at one-fifty," Shepard said.

"Got him," Ash replied, "Great work, LT; just give me a few more seconds!" With a final blast from the cannon, a 4-meter geth appeared to fold in half and collapse. Seconds ticked silently by as Ash watched her display for more enemies.

"Field looks clear," Shepard said. "What was that, six of 'em?"

Ash smiled to herself. "Six it was."

"Good work, Williams, Alenko. All right, let's keep moving."

"Moving out, sir."

They went another 80 meters before reaching another obstruction. The service road led to a mining pit, but the Mako would need to hop the pile of rubble without seeing what was on the other side first.

"Smells like a trap to me, sir," Ash said. "Want me to go glass the area first?"

"Negative, you're our gunny. Vakarian, you up for a scouting task?"

There was a clank and rustle from behind, and then Garrus' claw was on the gunnery cage by the starboard door. "I thought you'd never ask. What's the req?"

"I want to look before I leap." Shepard switched the view on his console to a map of the area. "We're _here_. Here's the rubble pile. I want to know what's in the mining area before we hop into it. I want you to climb the rubble far enough that you can periscope the area. Stay on LOSI, but use the scrambler just in case."

"LOSI, synch on me," Garrus nodded as he worked his omnitool.

"Good hunting."

"Thanks." The turian bopped the hatch stud with his right claw, swung down and out while holding a crossbar with his left.

Kaidan adjusted the camera view of the artificial windshield to tilt up, showing the turian climbing the rubble. "Look at him go. Wow, he's a climber."

"Can I go with him?" Tali was at the door. "I want to see how well my cracking works at range."

Shepard held two fingers to his ear. "Garrus, I'd like to send Tali out with you to field test her cracking."

"Sweet," came the reply. "Always appreciate the opportunity to watch an artist at work."

Shepard looked over his shoulder to see the quarian disappearing down the hatch.

"I know…synch on Garrus," she said as her feet hit the ground.

"But stay behind me until I get into position. I want to know where they are before I expose you to their potential fire." Garrus' claws had given him an unusual advantage climbing the rubble pile, but there were a lot of loose stones; a largish one tumbled down behind him. "And there are going to be falling rocks. You might need to wait until I'm up before you follow."

"That'll give you a chance to use your periscope, right?"

Garrus' pace slowed as he approached the top of the rubble. "Eeee-xactly. Okay, I'm secure here, you can come up."

"On my way." Tali had been climbing slowly, but picked up her pace.

"You might be able to patch into my scope view, Mako," Garrus drew his pistol and switched it to periscope mode, "I don't know if LOSI has enough bandwidth for it, or if the devices will talk to each other."

"Aaaah, it looks like we have the bandwith, but the protocols are differerent." Kaidan leaned back in his seat.

"Tell us what you see," Shepard said.

"Looks like a mining pit, all right. In fact, it almost looks like it had been in operation until very recently. They've got it all carved out for tailings removal, though I don't see any vehicles or conveyors. And _there's_ somebody. A geth. Looks like a regular troop. There's another one, in a tower at 200 meters. But he's watching this area unh!–"

"Garrus?"

Something thumped on the Mako's hull.

"They shot it right out of my hand! How did they even see it?"

"They're machines," Tali explained as she climbed. "If you put a sentry on an area, all it has to do is watch for differences. As soon as something different shows up that's not part of your mission, you know you've got a potential threat. And only one hexel has to change for them to notice."

"It's not safe here," Garrus said, "Be careful."

"Of course." Tali slid up alongside the turian. "Did you get locations on them before they shot you?"

"My suit VI probably has a lock, but –"

"Good." Tali lowered her head and worked her omnitool.

A pop-up appeared on Garrus' monocle: _**"Tali" would like access to your suit's medical telemetry ACCEPT/DECLINE/MESSAGE.**_ "What's this? You want to control my temperature?"

"No, it's just the easiest channel to move large, live datasets. Tell it OK."

Garrus did so. Tali worked her omnitool some more.

"Good. I have range and direction on three targets." She held up her left arm, showing Garrus what she saw, and pointed at part of the holo. "Is _this_ the one you said was in a tower?"

Garrus looked at it and blinked in surprise. "_Three_ targets? Uh…yes. Yes it is. But how did you…"

Tali had picked up a medium-sized rock and handed it to him. "See this rock? Traverse over to the left, and find one about this big. When I tell you, hold it up over the top of the ridge. _Don't let your hand show._"

"It's a claw," Garrus started to make his way across the ridge, away from Tali. "But I know what you mean. How far do you need me to go?"

"As far as you safely can." Tali hadn't stopped interacting with her technology.

There was about three minutes of Garrus working his way across the ridge while staying in cover. "Okay, I think this is it," he said.

"Okay, lift the rock like you did your pistol."

Nothing.

"I don't think they're going for it."

"Are you sure it's visible over the ridge to the one in the tower?"

"Not really. This is a rock, not a periscope."

"Can you make a periscope with your omnitool?"

Garrus placed the rock on the hillside. "Sure. Give me a minute." He folded the fabber out of the armor's gauntlet, spun and flicked his way through the interface, and waited. His omnitool fabricator whirred softly, extruding a 3-cm wide periscope.

With the device in hand, he clicked it out to its full extension, and then raised the end overhead.

"There he is, the dirty scumsucker."

"Are you looking at the one in the tower?"

"Yes."

"Good."

They waited.

"What's supposed to happen next?"

"They're supposed to shoot your periscope," Tali said uncertainly. "Try wiggling it a little bit."

"Still no good. Maybe they don't care about a periscope, and they're only worried about a weapon. Want me to scope through my assault rifle?"

"I don't want to make you lose it."

"I'll just pick it up at the bottom of the hill with my pistol."

Tali still sounded dubious. "Well, okay…"

Garrus collapsed the periscope and shoved it into a pocket. He pulled his Thunder-VII off its hardpoint and triggered its decompaction, and then slowly lifted it until he could see over the ridge. "There they are. And there's the tower." Garrus waited. "You know, if I switch over to my sniper rifle, I can drop this guy."

"I don't want you to shoot him, I want you to trigger _him_ to shoot. Once he shoots back, I can lock on him and take him over like I did with the turret." She paused, considering whether to admit she wasn't 100% sure it would work. "I think."

Garrus began to pan the weapon left, looking around at the rest of the site. "What if I shoot and deliberately miss? He'd almost certainly shoot back." He stopped as he noticed the third geth platform, standing with its back to them. "Ah, there you are."

"I want to hack the one in the tower because he's almost certain to have the best view. He knows where all his geth friends are, and should be able to take them down quickly."

Sparks flew off Garrus' assault rifle. "Unh!" He slipped partway down the pile of rubble, scrambling for a better grip. "I'm okay…okay. I think they overloaded it."

Tali hadn't waited, assuming the turian would be fine without her help. One of the three geth signatures had changed subtly, and she locked in on it, inserted a binary wedge where the signal switched back, waited for it to reprocess, and then expanded it. Four other such "wedges" sprang from the first, securing the remote operand into the geth datastream like pitons in a mountainside, each anchored to the others.

Tali gestured to close the web by closing her own hand, appeared to pull something off of her own fingertips; the web expanded again, now with a second web cloning itself from the first. They were her hands within the geth; she immediately reached for system control and inverted the IFF values.

But no purely organic intelligence can operate as fast as a cybernetic one; once her operation was in the buffer, she gestured to execute it. In less than a millisecond, the geth in the tower knew that the other geth were hostile, were part of the Alliance incursion, and had to be stopped.

A gunshot rang out.

Garrus looked up toward Tali through his monocle, which had provided an analysis of the weapon fired by its sound. "Tali, stay down! They're using anti-materiel rifles!"

Another shot rang out, echoing around the open mining pit.

"Don't worry, I've never seen them, and they can't see me."

Another shot.

"Three? What...ergh...what's he shooting at now?" Garrus had to attempt docking his assault rifle three times before it took.

"Want me to go look?"

"No! Stay there, I'm coming back up."

"I could use your periscope," the quarian said. "It would be fun to watch."

"Fun? Are you crazy? Those are dangerous robots firing high-powered rifles!"

"And he's under my control, shooting other geth. This is great!"

"But there might be others! _Stay down_!"

"Oh, please, Mister Garrus vas KnowItAll, I wasn't born yesterday. _Always wait until the shooting stops before exposing any body parts you wish to keep_."

Another shot.

"Four? Spirits, _what is he shooting at_?"

Shepard's voice sounded over LOSI, "Hey, you having problems up there? You want some artillery? We can have a mortar unit ready to go in ninety seconds if you can give us target data."

Another shot.

"Don't bother," Garrus said. "This show will be over by the time you get out there. The geth sniper in the tower must be just mowing 'em down. But it looks like he's shooting ahead of us–"

The tower exploded brilliantly, hurling flaming debris across the landscape.

Tali jumped. "Keelah! What was _that_?"

"Must have been what our sniper was shooting at," Garrus said. "I suppose it shoots back. Might be one of those walkers we'd seen earlier, did you see a blue projectile? Never mind, let's get back down to the APC." He began to back down the hill, moving almost as fast as he had when ascending it.

"Ooh, I'd love to crack one of _those_." She noticed Garrus was moving very quickly. "How are you so fast at this? Are you one of those rock-climbing zaxes?"

"This is terrain very typical of Palaven. Besides that fact that every youth gets a training in climbing safety, we've been doing it for millennia. My legs bend a little bit forward, which makes it a lot easier. We still lose the occasional adventurer to mishaps on the trails, but I suppose the danger is part of the appeal. Never been much of an adventurer like that. Climbing rocks does nobody any good but the climber."

"Or the rescuer."

"Mm. Point taken." Garrus jumped down the last two meters, and began surveying the area around the Mako for his sidearm.

"Get in here," Shepard said. "Whoever blew away the tower must know we're coming."

"But we didn't fire a shot," Tali said. "Only if they have eyes in the sky would they know, and I haven't detected any airborne drones."

"Then would you get your butts on board in a hurry because I _asked you really nicely_?"

Garrus found fragments of his pistol just as Tali jumped down to the ground. He picked them up and looked at them sadly. "Guess that's what happens when you hit a pistol with a two-gram slug." He reached out with his free claw to the Mako and triggered open the portside hatch.

Tali had opened the starboard hatch, but couldn't reach the crossbar. Fortunately, Wrex had suspected this might happen, and had moved forward to lower the ladder for her. She stepped on the lower rung before it had even fully descended, and Wrex flipped the toggle to UP; the ladder ascended with the quarian.

"Thanks, Wrex!"

"Sure. Always glad to help you out."

The ladder reached the top of its throw, and Tali stepped off. Garrus had just yanked himself into the Mako, and so both hatches closed at the same time.

Shepard pointed ahead. "Let's go."

"Kaidan backed up about thirty meters, and checked over his shoulder to be sure the rest of the team was secure before racing ahead and engaging the return booster to throw the Mako over the six-meter pile of rubble, and between the two cliff faces.

He even used the jump jets to slow their descent right before they hit ground.

Ash noticed. "Nice one, LT."

Kaidan smiled without taking his eyes off the artificial windscreen. "Thanks." Nothing else in the mining pit moved, or had an energy signature. "Looks like we're clear."

"Gunnery concurs."

"How far to the dig site entrance?"

Kaidan reached ahead, pulling the windshield view into 3D. "We're here. We just need to get across this pit, and up the other side. Then it's maybe 100 meters to the entrance."

"Almost there, team. Alenko, let's roll. Gunnery, stay sharp. Tali, monitor sensors with me."

"Sure. Just log me in," she said as they started across the vast, open pit mine.

Shepard gestured to a holographic pull-down, flicked his finger at Tali's ID. "Right. Sorry about that."

***** Glossary *****

APC: Armored Personnel Carrier  
Chep: Mild quarian curse referring to fecal matter (non-canon)  
CYA: Cover Your Ass  
FCO: Fire Control Officer  
LOS: Line of Sight  
LOSI: Line of Sight Intersuit, a laser-based communications protocol less subject to interception  
OTH: Over the Horizon  
req: requirement  
rock-climbing zax: while related to the north-going zax and south-going zax, rock-climbing zaxes are renowned for their ability to…uh…I think you can figure this one out for yourselves.


End file.
